American 
Carnation 
Culture. 



LAMBORN. 








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American 

Carnation Culture 



THE EVOLUTION OF 

DIANTHUS CARYOPHYLLUS SEMPERFLORENS, 



ORIGIN, HISTORY, CLASSIFICATION, VARIETIES, 

PROPAGATION, DISEASES, REMEDIES, CARE, 

CULTURE AND COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE. 



BY L. L. LAMBORN. 



'Flowers are the smiles of nature.' 



FOURTH EDITION. 

REWRITTEN AND BROUGHT COMPLETELY UP TO DATE. 



ALLIANCE, OHIO, 

LO RA L. LAMBORN, Publisher. 
1901. 



<>' 



LIBRARY of COMdKSSS 
fwc Copies HectiveJ 

FEB 17 !908 

CLnss'/4- xxc. iVu, 

COPY S. 



Copyrighted in 1901 hy 

LO RA L. LAMBORN, Publisher. 

ALLIANCE, OHIO, 



Press of 

The Review Publishing Co. 

Alliance, Ohio. 



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GENEVIEVE LORD. 



conte:nts. 



Proi^oguk, 



I— Origin of the term Dianthus. Name of a genus of plants 
History from Theophrastus to Alegatiere. Arrest of botan- 
ical knowlege for centuries. - - - - 13 

II.— History of Carnations from Alegatiere, 1844, to Charles Starr, 
1893. Peculiarities of the new species. First importations. 
First cross fertilization in America. - - - 18 

III.— Carnations from Charles Starr to the 2nd year of the 20th century. 
Importations into the Carnation zone. Number originated 
and introduced. Analysis of the list. - - - 23 

IV.— New Carnations. Hybridizing and crossing. How to fertilize. 
Chances for success. Opinions of experts. Restraining and 
progressive forces. ------ 29 

v.— I^ife lives in cells. Continuing life by cuttings. The conditions 
required. Difference between a cutting and a seedling. 
Kind of cuttings. The time to strike them. - - 39 

VI.— Carnations in the field. Precautions against failure. Prepara- 
tions for their field life. The sanitarium for Carnations. 
Number of plants to an acre. . - - - 4^ 

VII.— Carnations from the field to greenhouse beds or benches. Karly 
and late lifting. In wet and dry weather. Bench planting. 
Distance apart. Watering and shading. - - - 48 

VIII.— Solid beds. Raised benches with wooden, slate, and tile bot- 
toms. Testimony of Carnation growers as to their prefer- 
ences. Proper soil for beds and benches. - - 52 

IX.— Tying up, or supporting Carnation flowering stems. The better 
plan. Disbudding Carnations. A matter of market. A 
conservation of vital energy. - - - - 56 



X. — Professor Arthur on plant respiration. Surface view of 

epidermal cells of a Carnation leaf. Section cut through 
a Carnation stoma. Physiological demand of Carnations 
for fresh air. _-..-. 58 

XI. — Overhead watering. Surface watering. Sub-watering. Cost 
of beds and benches. Opinions of growers on their rela- 
tive merits. ------ 61 

XII. — Topping Carnations, Shipping flowers and cuttings. Enigma 
of flowers "going to sleep." Opinions of eminent Carna- 
tionists. Functions of petals and their preservation. - 65 

XIII. — Is quantity of bloom being sacrificed for quality ? Are Carna- 
tions growing less productive? Records quoted. Blooms 
per plant. Comparisons made. - - - - 70 

XIV. — Clnssification of Carnations based on colors. European system 
of nomenclature. Ratio of colors in Carnations. Virile 
colors. Sentiment of colors. - - - - 73 

XV. — Growing Carnations under glass through the summer. Why a 
higher grade of flowers ? Increased cost. Advanced price, 
an earlier market, the compensation. - - - 80 

XVI. — Sunlight and ventilation the prime factors in a Carnation house. 
Butting glass. Heating. Heat radiating surface necessary 
to glass surface. Tables. - - - - 82 

XVII. — Fertilizers for Carnations. Formulas. Effect of excessive nutri- 
ment on Carnations. Exact analysis of a given quantity of 
Carnation roots, stems and leaves. - - - 89 

XVIII. —Diseases of Carnations resulting from insects: Greenfly, [Rhopa- 
losiphum Dianthi)] Red Spider ^Tetranychiis Telarius); 
Nematodes {Heierodera Radicicola). Thrips. Their 
remedies. _ - _ _ - 94 

XIX. — Diseases of Carnations resulting from Fungi: Rust ( Uromyces 
Caryopkyllinus) \ Wet Stem Rot {Rhu20ctonia)\ Dry 
Stem Kot [Fusarium] ; Spot Disease {Septoria jDianlM) 
Their remedies. ------ 100 

XX. — Nutrient diseases. Barren Carnations. Cohering petals. 
Vurple ]omt (Rosette). Ruptured Calyxes. Double flower- 
ing Carnations. Incidental pests. . _ _ 107 



XXI. — Do varieties of Carnations deteriorate and die? Continuing 
life by cuttings a natural and virile method. As preserva- 
ative as reproduction by seed. - - - no 

XXII. — Life lives in cells. Conception is by fission of cells. Origin 
of bud variations or "Sports." Bi-sexual life in Carna- 
tions. In all Monoecious class of plants. - - 113 

XXIII. —Geographical Botany of the commercial Dianthus. Its type in 
Germany, France, England, California, on the isotherm 
of 50° mean temperature. - - - - 118 

XXIV. — Carnations the product of adaptation by selection. Survival 
of the fittest. Origin of varieties. Basis of species. 
Foundation of genera. Essence of orders. - - 122 

XXV. — Map of the zone of the semperflorens Carnation. Isothermal 
lines. Climatic conditions. Every type of species confined 
to its own isotherm. Carnations 50° mean heat. - 126 

XXVI. — Map of 50° isotherm normal climate for Carnations. List of 
the best Carnations since the birth of Astoria. Names, 
colors, originators, place of their birth. - - 131 

XXVII — New species of Carnation. Distinctive features of Dianthus 
Superba, and Dianthus Semperflorens. They require 
different cultural treatment. - - - - 137 

XXVIII— Carnation brevities. Multum in parvo. - - 144 

XXIX — Popular Carnation Culture. Carnations in every cottage. 
How amateurs can grow them for lawn adornment. Table 
decorations and boutonnieres. . - - . 165 

XXX— Epilogue. Evolution of the five-petaled pink. - - 171 



PROLOGUE. 




THE first edition of American Carnation Culture 
was published in 1885, before the organization of 
any national floral societies, or the establishment of 
Trade Journals, to collect and collate facts. The 
only medium or source of mutuality among carna- 
tion growers at that time was by brief, sententious 
catalogues. The author purchased and grew nearly 
200 varieties of carnations then originated, to obtain 
some experimental data upon which to found the 
work. He then claimed and now claims American 
Carnation Cui^ture was the first and only work ever published 
in historical form on the American remontant type of carnations. 
Dodwell published a work in England about the same time 
with only a few pages devoted to the Alegatiere type of carnations. 
Hogg wrote a work in 1820 on the culture of the carnation pink. 
Asa Gray wrote a pamphlet on carnations in the thirties, Gard 
in 1597, Busier in 1813, John Ray in 1713, Philip Mullens in 
1752, William Curtis in 1788, Martin in 1807, and others, up to 
1840, speak and briefly treat of carnations. But none of these 
refer to the species I seek to deal with, for it was not originated 
until 1856. 

The superintendent of the Agricultural Department of the 
United States, estimates from the census of 1 900 that the glass sur- 
face of greenhouses in America amounts to 300,000,000 superficial 
square feet, equaling an area of about 8000 acres. There are 15,000 
floral establishments that rise to the commercial importance of 
requiring constantly the employment of two men, and giving sup- 
port to 30,000 people. This calculation does not include thous- 
ands of small houses, and conservatories for growing plants and 



10 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

flowers for private use and incidentally local sales. The superin- 
tendent estimates that the total sales, or output from the glass con- 
sidered, amounts to 22,500,000 dollars yearly. The item of roses, 
in this aggregate, amounts to 6,000,000 dollars; carnation flowers, 
4,000,000 dollars annually; and the number of carnation flowers 
sold equals the number of roses. A correspondent writes that 
3,000,000 carnations are planted in the field this spring (1901) 
tributary to the Chicago market. 

There are two establishments, each with a quarter of a 
million feet of glass, devoted largely to carnations. They each 
plant nearly twelve acres in the field, and house two hundred and 
fifty thousand plants in the fall. Millions of dollars are now in- 
vested in growing carnations. 

The first carnation plant .sold in America was in March, 1864. 
What an amazing development in a humble industry in less than 
forty years. The end is not yet. The carnation crosses the thresh- 
old of the 20th century with queenlier step, greater grace, and 
sublimer beauty than ever before 

Dianthus is the coming flower. Its acclaims for the Throne of 
Flora is echoing in the tomorrows. Dianthus is embodied evolu- 
tion. It contains imprisoned with its mystic life-force the power of 
marvelous evolvement, the prophecy of untold progress. It 
started on its triumphant march a petty plant, with five little 
flower leaves, glued to the grimy earth from which it sprang; now 
fifty dawn-lit, iridescent petals nestle around its anthers and snare 
the admiration of the world with the witcheries of their colors. 
It has kept abreast with the progress of the ages, and is responsive 
to the magic touch of the florist's art. The carnation will live and 
grow in public esteem as long as men love the perfume of spices, 
pay homage at the gates of grace, and bow at the shrine of beauty. 

In this work the amateur will find a guide for his efforts; the 
inexperienced carnation grower, directions for success; the practic- 
al cultivator, sufficient to interest him; the future historian of 
Dianthus, facts rescued from oblivion; and the vegetable phys- 
iologist, a philosophy close along the lines of plant life. 




CRESSBROOK. 

This Carnation received the phenomenal rating at Baltimore, in Feb- 
ruary, 1901, by such critical and competent men, acting as judges, as Wm. 
Scott, Wm. Nicholson and Patrick O'Mara, of 94 points, within 6 points of 
perfection. This judgment was confirmed by men of equal acumen in 
Boston a month later. Cressbrook originated with Mr. C. Warburton at 
Fall River, Mass, It will be put on the market in the spring of 1902. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM DIANTHUS— THE NAME OF A 
GENUS OF PLANTS -HISTORY FROM THEOPHRASTUS - 
TO ALEGATIERE. 

THREE hundred years before the Christian Era, Theo- 
phrastus, a disciple of Socrates, philosopher and moralist, 
lived in Greece. He published a little work on the 
Flora of his native land; he had no conception of genera and 
species, and divided all plants into three classes; Aquatic, Flower- 
ing Plants, and Culinar}^ Herbs. He wrote in Greek, and was 
the first author to mention and name a little procumbent, five 
petaled flowering plant; he called it Dianthus, from two Greek 
words, Dio (divine), anthos (flower), meaning Divine flower. 

In the evolution of botanical science Theophrastus was fol- 
lowed by Discorides, Pliny, and Galen, in the second century. 
From this period until the sixteenth century botany was not en- 
riched by a single work of merit. During this long interval ot 
time, the little light that had been thrown on the vegetable 
kingdom by a few early authors became more dim and obscure. 

In the sixteenth century, Gesner of Germany was the first to 
establish families ot plants founded on resemblances, or afl&nities, 
and his labors awakened new interest in botanical pursuits. 
Einnaeus lived in the eighteenth century and gave a new no- 
menclature to botanical science. He described with precision 
every organ of a plant now known, and gave them appropriate 
names which are still closely adhered to. His classification of the 
vegetable world is called the "Artificial System." Einnseus is 
called the 'Trince of Naturalists." With a few admitted defects, 
no arrangement of the plants has yet been offered as simple and 
effective as his. 

After Einnseus, Jussien proposed a system of classification 
founded upon certain distinctions which was found to be universal, 



14 AMERICAN CARNATION CtlLTtlRE. 

and his arrangement has been called the "Natural System" of 
botany . 

It is of interest to inquire into the botanical classification of 
a plant that has lived with a changeless name for two thousand 
three hundred years in the floral records of the world, and whose 
flowers in forty years, in this country, have risen in commercial 
importance to four millions of dollars annually. 

According to the I^innaean System (improved by Lindley,) 
of plant classification, the carnation of commerce belongs to the 
Caryophyllacie tribe of plants, of the Dianthus genera, and is one 
of the twenty natural orders of the Polypetalous division of plants. 
As such it is technically described as an Herb, with opposite, en- 
tire leaves; Flower, regular, both terminal and axillary; Sepals, 4 
or 5, distinct, or adhering; Petals, 4 or 5; Stamens, as many ag 
the petals opposite them, sometimes twice as many; Ovary, com- 
posed of 2 to 5 carpels; Stig?na, 2 to 5, sessile, filiform; Fnnt, 
a capsule opening at the apex; Seeds, indefinite in number; 
Embryo, curved or coiled around the outside of a mealy alburnum. 
There are enumerated over 200 species of the Dianthus 
genera of plants, none of which are natives of America, if Dian- 
thus Repens is excepted, which is found on the coast of Kotzebues 
Sound. Dianthus Armenia, and Prolifica found in the eastern 
states, are introduced, and troublesome weeds, as is Dianthus 
Stellaria Media, or the common Chickweed that is so vigorous in 
the cooler months of autumn. There are only four species in 
America which are regarded of any floral value. They are: 
I. — Diayithus Barbatiis. Synonyms: Sweet William, etc. 
2. — Dianthus Chinesiis. Synonyms: China Pink, D Diadem- 
atus, D. I^ancinatus, D. Headwigii are sports of this variety, and 
in a bed of a thousand seedlings it is hard to find two alike. 

3. — Dianthus Plumaris. Synonyms: Garden Pink, Bunch 
Pink, Florists' Pink, Cushion Pink, Pheasant- eye Pink, Dianthus, 
Hortensus, etc. 

4. — Dianthus Caryophyllus. Synonyms: Clove Pink, Clove 
Gilly Flower, Carnation, Tree Carnation, Remontant Carnation, 
Semperflorens Carnation, Everblooming Carnation, Forcing Pink, 



FROM THEOPHBASTCS TO ALEGATIERE. 15 

Hardy Pinks, Sweet May Pinks, Scotch Pinks, Picotees, Hy- 
brid Perpetual Pinks, Self, Fancies, Bizzars, Marguerites, Flakes, 
Malmasons, and a score of other local names in Europe and Amer- 
ica are given to the interminable varieties of the four mention- 
ed primal species of the Dianthus genus of plants. All pinks 
have a dwarfer growth than carnations, their leaves are more 
profuse and grass-like, they grow in tufts, lo to 15 inches high, 
bloom profusely in a single crop, and will not stand forcing. 

The lacings, shadings, blendings and markings, on the petals 
of pinks are always transverse; those on carnations are parallel 
with the axis of the petals. 

In a work devoted exclusively to a single species of the Car- 
yophyllus family of plants, I can only generahze the statement 
that classes, orders and genera of the botanies are but divergent 
varieties of parent plants, with their habits and natures modified 
and rounded by different enforced climatic condition into so-called 
species. The environments of Dianthus in Germany have differen- 
tiated it into Bizzars, Selfs, Flakes and Fancies, which types are 
perpetuated by layering the branches. In France they are modi- 
fied into Malmasons, Marguerites, Border Pinks, and the types 
continued by layering. 

In 1597 Gard declared that there were so many varieties 
of pinks that "a large volume would not contain a description of 
them all." In 16 13 Bessler figured a carnation flower at 3}^ 
inches in diameter. In 1702 a John Ray catalogued 360 distinct 
kinds of carnation pinks. In 1752 Philip Millens in his 
''Gardeners' Dictionary" advised splitting the calyxes of carna- 
tions with a knife to avoid their rupturing. In 1788 William 
Curtis figured a Bizzars at 3^ inches across, and added, "that it 
was not the most perfect flower of the kind, either in form or size." 

In 1807, Martyn fixed 3! inches as the largest type of a car- 
nation flower, on a strong, stiff stem from 30 to 45 inches long. 
In 1 840, carnations of the Malmason type in Europe are spoken 
of as producing flowers 6 inches in diameter, which is confirmed 
by Mr. Hill, who visited Europe in the interest of the carnation 
a few years back. 



16 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

The question is asked why were those magnificent carnations 
with monstrous corollas spoken of in history as existing from 
fifty to two hundred years ago discarded. The answer is, they 
were not carnations at all, in the sense the term is now used. They 
had none of the elements that make Alegatiere's new species valu- 
able, they were not perpetual bloomers, and could not be forced 
to yield their flowers in a season when they were wanted. They 
were highly stimulated pinks, Titanic flowering Picotees, mon- 
strous Selfs, Bizzars or Fancies, which produced a few prodigious 
blooms and died in the throes of parturition. 

In 1775, Linnaeus having differentiated the various organs 
of flowers and particularized their functions, seemed to make 
artificial poUenizaiion possible, and experiments were successfully 
made on many species of flowers. Mons Dalmias, Schmitt and 
Alegatiere, of Lyons, France, were the first men to attempt it on 
the domesticated and improved species of cultivated carnations 
chronologically referred to. Their crossings and re- crossings con- 
tinued from 1844 to 1856, when Alegatiere evolved the first type 
of the remontant carnation. The product of his crosses had stiff 
lower stems, flowers 2 inches in diameter; they would bear forcing 
and bloom continuously. In 1894 John Thorp predicted that this 
species of carnation would evolve a flower 4 inches in diameter. 

The conditions in America have developed the remontant car- 
nation, the California thermal carnation, and also improved the 
hardy pink. These differences have been fixed by heredity through 
generations of plant life, prompted by local climatic conditions, 
and are not successfully transferable from one of these localities 
to another without requiring a corresponding period of adapta- 
tion. No European or California carnation has ever been im- 
ported into the remontant zone of America, and been immedi- 
ately successful. The parents of the species with which we have 
to do, grow wild through southern Europe. It was named Dia7i- 
ajitJms Caryophyllus by Linnaeus, from the strong clove fragrance of 
its flower; Caryophyllus being the botanical name of the clove, it 
literally means the Clove Dianthus. It had nothing to distin- 
guish it from its related species but its exhilarating perfume. It is 



FROM THEOPHRASTiJS TO ALEGATIERE. 17 

hardy above zero, while most of its cognate species are hardy be- 
low zero. Its primitive habits stand today in strong contrast with 
its evolved progeny. 




DILLON'S QUEEN LOUISE. 



CHAPTER II. 

HISTORY OF CARNATIONS FROM ALKGATIERB TO STARR, 

1844 TO 1890. 

IN 1876 the question arose, "where, how, when and by whom, 
was the perpetual carnation originated ?" Jene Sisley, an 
eminent and reliable horticulturist of Monplaiser, Lyons, 
France, under whose personal observation the facts transpired, 
wrote for the Revue- Horticole, a French journal, only ten years after 
the circumstances occurred, the facts attending the origin of the 
new species of carnations, in answer to the above question. In 
1886, ten years later, Jene Sisley recapitulated the same facts, 
and his article was published in the 14th number of the 
American Florist. 

The particulars cannot be more tersely stated than in the 
language of Jene Sisley and we give his article verbatum. 

"I think it may be of interest to horticulturists and amateurs, 
to be informed of the carnation's history which I published ten 
years ago in a paper of limited circulation. According to several 
horticultural writers, the carnation was cultivated two thousand 
years ago, but we know no more of what was practiced in those 
times than in any other science; it is only since the beginning of 
this century (19th) that the lacts of nature have been really 
studied, and we can only relate what has lately been practiced. 

The perpetual carnation was originated at Lyons, France. 
It was M. Dalmias, a celebrated amateur gardener to M. Lacene, 
founder of the first Horticultural Society of that region, who ob- 
tained the first really constant blooming carnation, in 1842. He 
sent it out in 1844 under the name of Atim. It was the production 
of an artificial fecundation, of a so-called species known by the vulgar 
name of carnation of Mahon, or of St. Martin, the latter because 
it was blooming by the middle of November, and fertilized by 
carnation Bielson. 

This first gain was successively fecundated by Flemish carna- 
tions, and in 1 846 Dalmais obtained a great number of varieties of 
all colors. 



VROU AtiEGATlERE TO STAfilt. 19 

M. Schmitt, a distinguished horticulturist of Lyons, followed 
M. Dalmias, and obtained several fine varieties like Arc en eiel, 
and Etolle Polaire, which were cultivated for several years, but 
do not now exist, having been superseded by better kinds. In 
1850, a desease having destroyed his collection, M. Schmitt aban- 
doned their culture. Soon after, Alphonso Alegatiere undertook 
the hybridization of carnations, and in a short time obtained great 
success, dotting that series with a great many varieties, all par- 
ticularly dwarf and obtained a very great improvement by creat- 
ing those with stiff lower stems, about 1856. We can say Alega- 
tiere originated a new species. He also upset the old system of 
propagating by layering and has proved that propagation by cut- 
tings is the best and most reasonable method, produces the best 
plants and thus justified my saying that layering is the infancy of 
the horticultural art. He also demonstrated that nothing is 
easier than propagating carnations by cuttings, and the best time 
to strike them is in January and February, and the best mode is 
to put them in a bench of fine sand, in a span roof house, without 
bell glasses, the benches underneath being heated by hot water 
pipes, to 60 or 70 degrees, and the cuttings will strike root in from 
three to four weeks. The sand must be kept damp and the cut- 
ting syringed every day. They can be placed out in April or May, 
and will make fine plants to bloom in Autumn." 

Jknb S1SI.EY, 
Feb., 1886. Monplaiser, Lyons, France. 

Several species of the pink family of plants grew wild along 
the Mediterranean shores and in southern Europe, that had been 
domesticated and cultivated for the beauty of their flowers. Their 
strains, from this cause, became much improved. Linnaeus, the 
great naturalist, in the first of the 19th century described the male 
and female organs of plants and the fertilizing properties of the 
pollen. This discovery led to the possibility of fecundation of 
plants being accomplished by artificial means. The universal 
botanical interest Linnaeus awakened led the curious and ingenious 
to experimenting with artificial pollenization. Hybridization was 
accomplished, and cross fertilization became common with many 
species of plants. 

It is evident that Atim was the first recorded name of the per- 
petual blooming carnations, the Adam of the race. But a new 
species does not spring at once into existence full armored, booted 



20 AMERICAN CARNATION CUIiTlTRE. 

and spurred. The boundary between Atim and its successors and 
Atim and its parents was vague and ill-defined. It required time 
and heredity to round its successors into a species. Varieties 
are the parents of species. Nature starts a variety at a single 
fructification, but it requires generations of plant life to fix the 
features of the variety into a distinct class. It has taken years to 
eliminate ancestral vestiges from carnations, and unfold their 
higher possibilities; and the end is not yet. Racial heredity is so 
insistent that as late in the carnation's history as the first edition 
of American Carnation Cui^turk the author found it necessary 
to classify it into late and early, constant and cropping, short 
and long stemmed classes, which divisions were founded on the 
retained relics of their pre-natal types. 

The species of carnation evolved by the labors of Dalmais, 
Schmitt and Alegatiere had three important features of difference 
from all its progenitors. 

First. It was structural, had stiffer lower stems, and its an- 
cestors had a sprawling and procumbent habit. 

Second. It kindly responded to the stimulus of artificial heat 
called fo7%ing, which is death to its parental and all its generic 
relations. 

Third. It possesses inherently the power of distributing the 
short-lived and immense single crop of bloom peculiar to its tribe 
of plants throughout its entire mature life. By reason of these 
three distinguishing peculiarities it has been called the perpet- 
ual carnation. 

It has been called the tree carnation, because its stems are 
longer, more erect, rigid and tree-like than any of its associate 
species. It is called the re7no7itant carnation from its nature to 
continually re -mount itself with flowers. It is called the sempei- 
yto?ms carnation from semper, (continuously) and floie^is (flower,) 
meaning continuously flowering. It has been called the clove 
carnation because of the clove fragrance of its flower. 

I have made diligent effort to obtain facts relating to the in- 
troduction of carnations into America, and the result leaves little 
that is legendary. A firm of florists on I^ong Island, composed 



FROM AliEGAEIERE TO STARR. 21 

ofZeiler, Gard and Dailledouze, in 1858, imported from Lyons, 
some vSeed cross-fertilized by Alegatiere, who after Dalmias and 
Schmitt became the representative of the new species of carnations 
in France. So far as tradition and old records throw light on this 
invoice of seed, but little came of it. There is not a single carna- 
tion bearing a name until after this firm's second importation, in 
1862. 

In March, 1864, two years later, this firm issued a catalogue 
which listed 125 named varieties of carnations. These were evi- 
dently the product of seedlings or cuttings obtained from their 
seedlings, imported the previous year. These varieties the firm 
offered for sale in five-inch pots. The late Peter Henderson, 
father of American horticulture, bought fifty of these plants, pay- 
ing Zeiler, Gard and Dailledouze $1.50 a piece for them, the first 
sale of carnations of any significance occurring on this continent. 

Louis Zeiler obtained from Lyons, France, three batches of 
carnation seed, and with the last in 1864, two plants, a pink and 
a white, named respectively La Puritie and Edwardsii. It is an 
error that the white La Puritie, cultivated until 1890, was the pink 
La Puritie imported by Zeiler. There has been in cultivation four 
La Purities, red, pink, white and variegated. Edwardsii was 
doubtless not continued by cuttings. It was the practice with the 
few florists, at populous points on the sea board, to raise their car- 
nations from seed and grow them in pots; bench culture was 
not then thought of. White carnations for years went under the 
name of Boule de Neige, Peerless, Avalanch, Snow Ball, White 
Perfection, Snow White, Edwardsii, etc. 

According to the census of i860 there were but 112 floral 
establishments in the United States at the advent of carnations in 
this country, and a large percentage of these were indifferent 
about a new flower of European orij^in. 

Astoria passes on the roster of publicity in 1864 as the first 
native born carnation. It is credited to Wilson, and is possibly a 
product of the 1862 or 1864 importation of seeds. 

There followed in 1866, La Puritie and Edwardsii. In 1866 
these imported plants are credited to Zeiler, who merely imported 



22 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

them. They were the best productions of Alegatiere's cross-fer- 
tilizing skill. 

During this long time there was a dearth of new kinds of car- 
nations continuing until 1875, when Charles Starr cross-ferti- 
lized and obtained Lady Emma. In 1877 he obtained Chester 
Pride; and in 1878, Buttercup. Then rapidly followed until his 
death (Dec. 24, 1891) a series of over 50 marvelous enrich- 
ments to the floral wealth of carnations. 

Charles Starr in 1873, caused to be made the first engraving 
of carnation flowers in America, and possibly in the world, 
which was sent to the writer to illustrate the first edition of 
American Carnation Culture, in 1885. (See engraving) 
He also wrote for the same work, the 07ily scientific and practical 
treatise on the classification, propagation and culture of hardy 
pinks ever published in America. He was a devoted admirer of 
the Dianthus family of plants. His life was an epoch in their his- 
tory. Zeiler, Gard and Dailledouze, of Flatbush, N. Y., first 
imported carnations to America. Charles Starr, of Avondale, in- 
troduced and made them famous to the lovers of the beautiful. 



CHAPTER III. 

CARNATIONS FROM STARR TO SKCOND YEAR OF TWENTIETH 
CENTURY— IMPORTATIONS -YEARIvY INTRODUCTIONS- 
NUMBER OF NAMED KINDS— AN ANALYSIS 
OF THE LIST. 

THE entire genus of the Dianthus family of plants is na- 
tives of Europe. Some of the indigenous species were 
hybridized and the product cross-fertilized by Dalmias, 
Schmitt and Alegatiere, which worked a revolution in their nature, 
and established a new species of the Dianthus genus of plants. 
There is not a variety of the pink tribe that will bear forcing and 
bloom continuously; but the varieties originated by Alegatiere, 
La Puritie and Edwardsii, are the great-grand-parents of all the 
remontant types of carnations in America today. 

Since their introduction, forty-three yearsa go this spring, 
they have multiplied varieties to eight hundred named kinds. 
The originators' names of one hundred and twenty of this list 
are unknown; about one hundred of the number have been im- 
ported into the carnation belt from Europe, and seventy-five 
from California; in the list are thirty known bud variations, or 
sports, and six synonyms. 

Things polarize at points. A hundred varieties of carnations 
have originated close to where Lady Emma, the first cross-fertil- 
ized carnation in America, germinated. 

After January, 1897, I name yearly the most promising new 
introductions, and their originators' names. During forty years 
there has been concerned in the development of the carnation, one 
hundred and forty different practical observing men, who have 
furnished what they deemed acquisitions to the list of carnations. 

Starr contributed, 55 Zeiler contributed, 9 

Dorner " 43 Creighton ** 9 

Simmons " 40 Brinton " 7 



24 



AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 



Linton contributed, 


32 


Hautell contributed, 


5 


Thorp 


26 


Swayne 


5 


Shelmire ' * 


18 


Wight 


5 


Hill 


12 


Larkins '• 


5 


Fisher 


10 


Lonsdale " 


5 


McGowen *' 


9 







Thirty originators have contributed less than five, and one 
hundred and twenty-seven originators have contributed but one. 
Many carnations were named but never disseminated, and many 
more were disseminated that proved worthless; about fifty in the 
list are marked improvements with strong individualized charac- 
ters. The rest should quietly sleep in the catacombs of defunct 
carnations. 

The first edition of American Carnation Culture, pub- 
lished in 1885, the author secured from the growers of carnations in 
fifteen different states a list of varieties they deemed most valu- 
able at that time. They grew the following kinds, with preference 
in the order named: 



Portia 

Prest. De Graw 
Buttercup 
Henzie's White 
Kdwardsii 
Snowden 
Grace Wilder 
Crimson King 
Grace Fardon 
Chester Pride 
Mrs. Joliff 



Peter Henderson 
T. Mangold 
Chas. Henderson 
Mrs. Carnegie 
Queen of Whites 
Scarlet Gem 
Peerless 
Alegatiere 
Century 
Prest. Garfield 
Princess Louise 



Robt. Craig 

Snowball 

Sunrise 

Duke of Orange 

Seawan 

Othello 

Astoria 

Pride of Penhurst 

Fisher's White 

Sea Foam 



The following comprises the varieties preferred by the grow- 
ers in the first year of the twentieth century, fifteen years later. 
Some growers, responding to enquiries this year, have named 
three or four kinds of the same class of colors they grow. To 
generalize and economize space, the first one named has been 
chosen as their preference. The introductions of 1900 and 1901, 
not being sufiiciently tested by growers, are not named in the 
twentieth century hst of preferred kinds cultivated. 



FEOM STABR TO NINETEEN HUNDBED AND TWO. 



25 



WHITE 


SCARLET CRIMSON 


White Cloud 


Crane Roosevelt 


Elm City 


Leopold Empress 


D. R. Nutting 


Bon Ton Hgypt 


Flora Hill 


Estelle New York 


Mary Wood 


Rosemont Maceo 


Eastern Star 


Jubilee Gomez 


Lizzie McGowen 


Joost 


Norway 


Lady Emma 


Glacier 


Portia 


E. Crocker 




PINK 


YELLOW 


Sampson 


Golden Beauty 


Avondale 


Gold Nugget 


Daybreak 


Eldorado 


Joost 


Buttercup 


Scott 




Triumph 


VARIEGATED 


Marquis 


Bradt 


Chapman 


Olympia 




Lilly Dean 




Pingree 



The above two list show that the entire list of cultivated carna- 
tions, even to the choicest varieties, are discarded, and new and 
improved kinds substituted, in the space of fifteen years. In the 
following lists of new carnations annually introduced, the leading 
ones only are named. It is worse than folly to rescue from obliv- 
ion the memories and names of dead carnations and lumber his- 
tory with a long list that is never read. 



Carnations Introd\iced in 1898. 



CONCH SHELL— Grout. 
GENESEE— Harmon & Burr. 
ALBA SUPERBA— Burton. 
NEW YORK- Ward. 
GEN GOMEZ— Ward. 
ETHEL W^ARD-Ward. 
EMILINE— Shelmire, 



GOLD NUGGET— Dorner & 

Son. 
SERVIA— S. Fisher. 
BIRD-IN-HAND— E. Weaver. 
GEN. MACEO -Ward. 
QUEENS— Ward. 
PROGRESS—Shelmire, 



26 



AMEBICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 



GOLD COIN— Hancock & Son. FIREFLY— Hancock & Son. 
MARY A. WOOD— Dorner & MAUD ADAMS— F. Niquet. 
Son. KATHLEEN PANTLIND— 

HAPPY DAY— A. Wake. Hopp & Smoke. 

BON TON— F. A. Blake. 

Carnations Introduced in 1899. 



ADMIRAL DEWEY— H. 

Echolz. 
ANNA EASTBURN— L. B. 

Eastburn. 
DUKE OF YORK— Shelmire. 
EVANSTON— M. Weiland. 
G. H. CRANE-Dorner & Son. 
GOV. GRIGGS— I. Tiwell. 
LIBERTY— Shelmire. 
MARY A. BAKER— Eastburn. 
MEP HISTO — A merican Rose 

Co. 
MRS. T. LAWSON— P. Fisher. 
POTO]\IIE— American Rose Co. 
S. S. PENNOCK— E. Weaver. 



AMERICA— Hill & Co. 

CHICAGO — Chicago Car- 
nation Co. 

DOROTHY MANDELL— H. 
A. Cook. 

GENEVE LORD— H. Weber. 

GOLD NUGGET— Dorner & 
Son 

LUNA — American Rose Co. 

MELBA— Craig & Son. 

MOORE'S CRIMSO N— 
Moore. 

OLYMPIA— J. May. 

PROGRESS— Shelmire. 

MARQUIS— L. E. Marquisee. 



ADMIRAL SCHLEY— Fick & Faber. 



Carnations Introdticed in 1900. 



BELLE BUTE— Aldous & Son. 
CLARA BURTON— Krets- 

chemer. 
BRILLIANT— McConnell. 
CALIFORNIA GOLD— Sievers 

&Co. 
KEYSTONE— P. Heilig. 
MME CHAPMAN- Crabb & 

Hunter. 



HELEN GOULD — Krets- 

chemer. 
OREGON— E. G Hill & Co. 
SUPERIOR — E. McConnell. 
P. HEILIG— P. Heilig. 
IRENE- Crabb & Hunter. 
ELEANOR AMES & MAY 

WHITNEY- Carmichael. 
CHRISTMAS ROSE— Heilig. 



CARNATIONS OF NINETEEN HUNDRED AND ONE. 27 

SAXON— S. Fisher. DOROTHY FORBES-Heilig. 

J. C. SIBLEY— P. Heilig. BBLIvE VISTA— J. Allen. 

CONQUEST— T. Capers. EEM CITY— M. E. Kraus. 

SIR T. LIPTON-H. B. Mc- THE CRAWFORD— T. 

Knight. Greaves. 

THE COPEIvY— T. Greaves. MICHIGAN— A. R. Walker. 

SYRACUSE— L. E. Marquisee. YOUNG AMERICAN— T. J. 
AEMA— Casper Aub. Totten. 

Carnations Introdviced in 1901. 

NORWAY (white), Weber & Son. 
EGYPT (scarlet), Weber & Son. 
ESTELLE (scarlet), Witterstatter. 
QUEEN LOUISE (white), Dillon. 
MIDNIGHT SUN (crimson), Weaver. 
LANCASTER (pink), Weaver. 
MRS. L. BEHN (white), Specht. 
MISS M. BEHN (pink), Specht. 
MISS F. SPECHT (scarlet), Specht. 
DELIGHT (pink), Dailledouze Bros. 
PROSPERITY (white), Dailledouze Bros. 
LORN A (white), Dorner & Son. 
DOROTHY (pink). Graves. 
CHALLENGER (scarlet), Hoffman. 
TWENTIETH CENTURY (pink), HofFman. 
BRANDYWINE (white), Love. 
MANGUS (white), Lake. 
EMPIRE STATE (white), Marquisee. 
LENA (pink), Pyle. 
BEAU IDEAL (pink), Pierce. 
HOOSIER MAID (white), Rasmussen. 
WHITE ROSE (pink), Nichols. 
MRS. BIRD COLER (red), Molatsch. 
MRS. P. HEILIG (pink var.), Heilig. 
GEN. CHAS. MILLER (white), Heilig. 



28 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

HABERNMEHL (pink), Kuhn. 

MAID OF HONOR (pink), Binstead. 

SUNBEAM (pink), Chicag:o Carnation Co. 

BON HOMME RICHARD (white), Chicago Carnation Co. 

NYDIA (variegated), Chicago Carnation Co. 

PROLIFIC A (pink), Chicago Carnation Co. 

GOV. WALECOTT (white), Fisher. 

EASTERN STAR (white), Fisher. 

Ne'w Carnations to be Introdiiced 

in 1902. 

CRESSBROOK (pink), Warburton. 
HEILIG'S (white), Heilig. 
MRS. NELSON (pink). Nelson. 

The maximum diameter of the flowers of six of these 
varieties the originators assert to be 4 inches with canes from 2 
to 3 feet long. Ten of the originators declare the flowers of their 
varieties never burst their calyxes. The startling prophecy of 
Thorp is realized, the four inch carnation flower is here. 



chapte:r IV. 

HYBRIDS AND CROSSES -NEW CARNATIONS— HOW TO FERTIL- 
IZE—CHANCES FOR SUCCESS— OPINIONS OF EXPERTS. 

CARNATIONS produce comparatively few seeds, most 
double flowers being barren. High culture modifies their 
generative organs, the stamens and pistils, into petals. 
Mr. Rudd reports having obtained 72 mature seeds from one pod, 
Mr. Dorner 116; but these are notable exceptions, from 10 to 20 be- 
ing the more common number. Seed sown in the early fall will 
grow, stand the winter with little protection and bloom the follow- 
ing season. Most of them will be abnormal products and lapses into 
primitive single types. When an improved specimen is, by acci- 
dent, obtained, the only known method of continuing the variety 
is by cuttings taken from this parent plant. The features of life 
sculptured in Nature's work-shop are never changed. The torrent 
of life in a mighty tree flowing through a little graft will not mix, 
mingle or modify its life. 

New carnations are obtained chiefly by crossing. A cross is 
a sexual fertilization between two members of the same species. 
Daybreak and Portia are two varieties of the same species. The 
seed of one of these fecundated with the pollen of the other would 
germinate and grow, and blow a flower different from either of its 
parents. This would be a cross; and, by this law, varieties are 
produced and may be indefinitely continued by cuttings from the 
plant. 

A hybrid is a sexual union between different species. 

Dianthus Plumaris (Sweet William) , is one species of the 
genus Dianthus; order, Diggnia; class, Decandria. 

Dianthus Semperflorens (common carnation), is a different 
species. The seed of one of these fecundated by the pollen of the 
other would produce a hybrid pink, likely to differ from its par- 
ents in the ratio they differ from each other. 



So AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

Crossing in nature is not uncommon. Hybridization is ex- 
tremely rare As a rule, in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, 
hybrids are not fertile with themselves, but will easily breed back 
into the original types. Nature reluctently consents to perpetuate 
a mongrel race, but is circumvented by art, and the desired hybrid 
is continued by layers, grafts or cuttings. 

While crossing is common, hybridization is a difl&cult exper- 
iment. Gaestner, high authority on hybridizing, says: "Out of 
one thousand carefully conducted experiments, fecundation was 
accomplished in only 259 cases." Hybridizing or crossing is 
simpl}^ transferring the pollen of one flower to the stigma of an- 
other, with cautionary measures taken to secure success A cool, 
damp atmosphere is inimicable to fertilization. The operator 
must prevent the seed bearing mother from being fertilized with 
its own pollen, and with tactful fingers, and delicate scissors, 
carefully open the envelopes of the flower, as it is about to bloom, 
cut away its stamens and apply the pollen, gathered from the 
anthers of the male parent, on a camel hair brush, softly apply it 
to the stigma of the mother flower, which then should be enclosed 
in a gauze sack to prevent access of insects bearing other pollen. 

Pollen retains its vitality for a long time after it is removed 
from the flower; it is asserted, for weeks and months in some 
species of plants. This is the artificial process for securing vari- 
eties, and nature carries out the same method, with the aid of air 
and bees for brushes, and chance for parents. The chances of ob- 
taining a better variety than is in cultivation is less than one in a 
thousand. A cross fertilizer may think himself fortunate if he 
originates one carnation that will hold the boards for a period of 
ten years against coming rivals. 

Mr. Dorner crosses in January and February, sowing the 
fertilized seed about the first of April in flats, transferring them 
when rooted to pots, thence to the open ground where some will 
bloom by August. His first selection is about one hundred of the 
most promising, out of, say, two thousand plants. These are 
transferred to the benches. This list is revised as frequentlj^ as 



HYBRIDS AND CROSSES. 31 

merits and demerits are determined, and he is fortunate, if out of 
the whole batch, he is able to save two of sterling merit. 

' Peter Fisher says: "November is an ideal month for fertilizing. 
If crossings are made in this month, the seed can be sown by the 
first of February and have three months' growth before planting 
out of doors, where most of them will bloom. I have had plants 
bloom four and a half months from the time of sowing the seed. 
Plants that bloom late have not much commercial value. Plants 
of strong, fleshy growth are less productive of bloom than plants 
of a wiry habit and narrow foliage. The pollen should be applied 
on a bright sunny morning, and if impregnation takes place, the 
bloom will wilt within twenty-four hours." 

Many things are to be considered by the originator of new 
carnations, as the selection of parents to secure in the progeny, size, 
form, substance, color, length and strength of stem, none which 
however, he can count on against chances. Wonderful possibili- 
ties lie hidden in the capsule of a cross. The labor of a hybridist 
is bewitchingly enchanting. He sees in the pollen grain an un- 
leased spark of vital lightning; in a primal cell of the ovary, a 
marvelous mixture of sexual forces that may wash new petals with 
strange colors, toned in the wonderland of life. 

Carnations, as with all double flowers, perfect but few seeds. 
The seed pods contain on an average twenty black seeds, and the 
time to gather them may be known by the brownish appearance 
of the seed vessel. Fertilized seeds are worth $i.oo per hundred, 
and if sown as soon as gathered, they germinate sooner than 
when long dried. They may be planted in pots, or flats, and kept 
moderately warm and moist. Give plenty of air; when the second 
leaf is formed, transplant into pots, and in time set out in the 
open ground and treat them as rooted cuttings. 

The first show of merit, or demerit in a cross is not perma- 
nent: it may marvelously advance or recede in excellence before 
it reaches the plane of its permanent habits. Mr. Dorner, an 
eminent cross-fertilizer, says some of his less promising seedlings, 
in the end, came out on top. 

Carnation seedlings have unstable characters. Before they 
reach the level of their true existence, they vibrate for years be- 



82 American carnatiox culturiJ, 

tween vital statics ol the past and life dynamics of the present, 
between the force of remote ancestry and the power of proximate 
parents. Often the oscillating pendulum swinging in a plant of 
great promise is snared by atavism and tied to a worthless type. 
Mammoth Pearl was a carnation of unusal expectation, but lapsed 
into degeneracy; Mars won the Cottage Garden Cup, but its 
name fell from the roll of merit; Stuart won the Flagon at Indian- 
apolis, but enjoyed only an ephemeral fame; Sea Gull won the 
Silver Flagon at Madison Square exhibition in 1891, over Mc- 
Gowen, and at once became a pervert, while its vanquished com- 
petitor, McGowen, wore the tiara of Whites for years, and still 
graces ermine laurels. Sea Gull served a purpose, it was the 
symbol of evolution, the prophecy of possibiHties, the herald of a 
marvelous unfoldment. A life-size cut of Sea Gull, was fur- 
nished this work by Mr. K. G. Hill. Possibly more seedlings 
advance in excellence than degenerate, some of the best varieties 
coming from seemingly unpromising seedlings. Jubilee was 
beaten at Indianapolis in 1892 by a scarlet seedling that retired at 
once from the stage. Flora Hill was outdone by Jack Frost, that 
lives only in the cemetery of dead carnations. 

Introducers should test their new carnations for five years be- 
fore sending them out, and then accompany each invoice with a 
statement of their habits and capricies so far as learned. 

An account is given in the Garten Flori (German), of an arti- 
fical cross fertilization between Dianthus Barbatus (Sweet Wil- 
liam) ,and Dianthus Caryophyllus (Carnation). A few perfect seeds 
were obtained which grew plants unlike either of their parents. 
After repeating the operation for six years a plant was obtained 
with many good habits. It blooms earlier than the common car- 
nation. The experiments prove that it takes at least ten years 
after being obtained, to fix the type of a hybrid carnation. 

There has been an annual average of about thirty new car- 
nations introduced since Mr. Starr originated I^ady Emma in 1875^ 
A swelling tide set in, in 1885, when thirty -two were named. In 
1886, eight; 1887, thirty-seven; 1888, sixteen; 1889, fifteen; 1890, 
eight; 1891, seventeen; 1892, thirty-one; 1893, fifty-three; 1894, 



OPINIONS OF EXPERTS. SS 

fifty-five; 1895, one hundred and twelve; 1896, seventy-two; 
1897, sixty; 1898, twenty-five; 1899, forty-five; 1900, forty; 
1 901, thirty-eight. 

The extraordinary increase of new carnations in 1884-5 was 
due to a large number of named seedlings from California. An 
insuperable difiiculty in determining the year of a carnation's in- 
troduction is in the records confounding the year it is named, and 
often advertised, with the year it is offered for sale or dissemi- 
nation, The number introduced annually is only proximately 
correct. 

Mr. Witterstatter, a very reliable and laborious cross- 
fertilizer says that most of the carnations he has exhibited and 
put on the market were accidents and surprises, on the crosses 
he made. He has kept a record of 2700 cross-fertilized seedliipigs; 
he is modest enough to admit he never was behind life's curtain, 
and knows nothing of the play of her secret unseen vital forces, 
but thinks the pollen parent most likely to influence color and 
the mother parent the vigor of the product. Beyond this he 
knows nothing of the mysterious alchemy of heredity. 

Mr. Dorner, also an eminent cross-fertilizer, says that if there 
is any rule in cross-fertilization that he has learned, it is that the 
lack in one parent should be supplied by the other; that color can- 
not be depended upon at all; that two crimsons may beget a white. 

Mr. Bissold, a practical cross-fertilizer, says that a man may 
use a thousand seedlings and not get the same shade of colors as the 
ones he uses. He never could obtain a yellow or dark pink. 

The late Charles Starr was the pioneer cross-fertilizer and 
rocked the cradle of new carnations in America. He introduced 
them to public favor, and orginated fifty new varieties in which 
yellow and variegated colors predominated. 

Mr. Fisher says further that he has raised strong growing 
plants, evidently a new botanical creation, that would not yield 
more than eight flowers the whole season. Varieties with wiry 
stems and narrow foliage are invariably free bloomers. He thinks 
flowers three and four inches in diameter can be reached on 
plants with these primitive habits and of great floresence. 



34 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

Nature's laws of proportion are not guided by the optimistic 
prophecies of cross-fertilizers. Four-inch flowers are reached, 
but not on woody plants with narrow foliage and procumbent 
habit, but on plants with broad fleshy leaves, great stems, mon- 
strous nodes and fibrous roots feeding on gross humus, flourishing 
in great heat, and circulating an immense volume of vegetable blood. 

Variation is a basic law of nature, the primal source of 
varieties, and the foundation of the cross-fertilizer's art. Some 
species of plants possess the varietal tendency stronger than others. 
Self-poUenization is no security against plant diversity. Mr. H. 
Vetch asserts that wheat is self- fertilizing, that the poUenization is 
effected in the bud and fecundation is impossible from foreign 
sources, yet new varieties of wheat are constantly occuring in a 
field, where all plants are surrounded with precisely the same con- 
ditions. 

The grosser structures of a new carnation are more easily 
secured by the selection of male and female parents, than are color 
and fragrance. Mr. Chas. T. Starr, obtained Buttercup, Duke of 
Orange, Lady Chatting, Venus and Field of Gold, from a batch of 
seeds crossed by Kdwardsii, La Puritie and Astoria. It is a sing- 
ular fact that most of Mr. Starr's fifty fine introductions belong 
to the variegated class of colors, while other fertilizers have 
been most successful with solid strains of colors. A new carna- 
tion, be it an artificial cross or self-fertiHzed, cannot possess precise- 
ly the same nature as either of its parents. There is a co- ming- 
ling of sexual cells in the crypt of conception, to start a new life, 
which is the unified product of the vital essence of different 
parents, which must give it an idiosyncracy distinctively its own. 
The carnation belongs to a class of plants that matures the 
pollen before the pistil is ready to receive it. Nature revolts at 
self-fertilization, and this provision in plants is a protest against 
inbreeding. It gives time for the flowers to be fecundated by 
foreign pollen, and only in delault of this fact does it accept its 
own pollen. This interval between the maturity of the pollen 
and pistil of the same flower wonderfully favors the operations 
of artificial cross-fertilization. 



Opinions of experts. 35 

Mr, Thorp who disseminated many new varieties, says that 
inbreeding with a batch of common blood seedlings is the quick- 
est and surest way to obtain a definite and an individualized plant 
and flower. 

Mr. Swayne, who has originated some good carnations, says 
that vigor in a plant is obtained by using pollen from single flowers 
and that such pollen will beget as many double flowering seedlings 
as will pollen from the stamens of a double flower. 

The North Dakota agricultural station alleges that an excess 
of food to plants is the cause of varieties. Food has no more to 
do with the origin of varieties than maze fed to a mare has in be- 
getting a mule. Varieties spring from opposite sexual forces 
meeting and mingling in a conceptive cell. 

A thousand carnation seeds will scarcely produce two alike. 
They will be single and double, erect and sprawling, monstros- 
ities and models, strong and weak, late and early, perverts and 
paragons, with colors and shades that shame the chromatic scale. 
But this is not strange, since nature never obliterates progress 
once made, but embalms vestiges of it in all succeeding struct- 
ures, atrophies and carries them forever to the front. If man 
could rightly read the hieroglyphs nature etches on her creations 
he would find the data of an unfolding history in everything 
from a worm to a world. Man carries in his mind and body vesti- 
gral relics, habits and homologues of every plane of organization 
and civilization through which he has ascended since Adam bit 
the apple. 

The majestic harvester that kings the fields of golden grain 
embodies all the mechanical appliances that have evolved for 
gathering grain since Ruth gleaned the fields of Boaz. The pon- 
derous locomotive that has continents for race courses, with oceans 
for boundaries, is an epitome of all the practical devices of apply- 
ing steam as a motive power, since Watt saw the imprisoned 
demon lift the lid of the boiling kettle. It is to these retained, 
conflicting hereditary forces that carnations owe their erratic, ver- 
satile and capricious nature. Vital vestiges and ancestral forces of 
all the species from which it sprang are hidden as latent relics, in 



1J6 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURU 

a carnation germ, ready to frescoe their features on every new 
carnation's life, since astonished Theophrastus exclaimed Dio 
Anthos. 

New species are permanently established in opposition to the 
tireless tendency of plants to lapse to their primitive types. The 
principle on which it is done is fully explained in a quotation 
from Asa Gray. 

"When an offspring inherits the peculiarities of its immedi- 
ate parents, its offspring has a redoubled tendency to do the same 
and the next generation still more; the tendency to be like the 
parent, grand parent and great grand parent, conspires to over- 
power the influence of a remoter ancestry." 

A species is initiated by a variety, but its fixity is the culmi- 
nation of conspiring generations. lya Puritie, the stable type of the 
remoBtant species of carnations, was the product of a dozen cross- 
fertilizing conspirators from 1844 to 1856. The new species, Di- 
anthus Superba, with grosser structure, stiffer stems, larger 
flowers, requiring more heat, greater moisture and different nu- 
trients, is the culmination of a hundred cross-fertilizing conspira- 
tors during forty years to evolve a species of carnation to meet 
their higher ideals. 

Mr Peter Fisher thinks it possible to obtain a strain of car- 
nations that will come true from seed. This may happen when 
nature reverses its law of diversification and starts unifying the 
vegetable kingdom. 

It is natural for originators to make pets of their seedlings, 
maximize their merits and minimize their faults. They boom 
them into notority by seductive advertising, the sorcery of half- 
tone engravings, and, possibly, some financial plunger, who does 
not know a corolla from a calyx, will offer a mythical sum of 
money for a new variety, and confer upon it the name of his wife 
for its stunning effect on the trade. 

There are on an average twenty new carnations introduced 
every year; the originators are chargeable with a knowledge of 
their merits by the venesected purchasers of stock from the time 
they hold a proprietary interest in the new creation, and have 



CHANCES FOR SUCCESS 37 

some rights in an adiective name. The trade should prefix the 
originator's name to every new carnation purchased, as, Dil- 
lon's Queen Louise, Ward's Roosevelt, Dailledouze's Prosper- 
ity, Weber's Norway, Fisher's Lawson, Witterstatter's Estelle, etc. 
It would make men who put new carnations on the market 
more cautious about their intrinsic merits, to know their names 
were to be prominently associated with their failure or success. 
It would be an assurance to the trade, and start a new roster of 
more rythmical names for carnations. To the originators, at 
first, it might appear critically bold, but they should not be super- 
sensitive, when they now walk without emotion through the 
necropolis of history and see their perfunctory certificates of 
character in brackets decorating the graves of from five to fifty of 
their own defunct carnations. 

I would put the carnation's name in parentheses and the 
originator's name in base relief to show that they accomplished 
much or little. 

A great fertilizer merits a fame fit to sit beside Alegatiere's. 
An adventurer riots on the money of his victims. 

It is amusing to hear some cross-fertilizers expatiate on how 
they led "Dame Nature" through the avenues of ancestral life 
and corraled her as a paragon of merit. History says that King 
Canute threw away his sceptre, abandoned his throne and hung 
his crown on the brow of a sculptured Christ, but there is no 
instance on record of nature surrendering her empire, and hand- 
ing her sceptre over to a pollen monger. Cross-fertilizers have 
by accident accomplished much, but they are as ignorant of the 
play of hereditarj^ and vital forces as they are of their own destiny. 
A fertilizer thinks he has imprisoned in some seed pods parental 
force that will write his name beside Alegatiere's; he sows, grows 
and flowers his thousand prize seeds. Fifty per cent of the batch 
have lapsed to the single type that grew on the shores of the 
Mediterranean two thousand years ago; some look a little like the 
male parent, others like the mother plant, and the rest like 
neither; but, like the hardy garden pink, some are freaks like a 
''double headed calf," "bearded woman" and *'a what is it" 



38 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

After tbe lapses, decadents, perverts, derelicts, nondescripts, mon- 
strosities and degenerates have been eliminated there may remain 
half a dozen creditable flowering plants, few of them as good, 
possibly one or two better, than existing kinds. The humble 
cross-fertilizer is as likely to obtain a grand carnation as those 
professional seedling raisers, who read learned and romantic 
disquisitions before societies on how their marvelous wisdom 
inveigled nature to serve their ideal purposes. There are very 
few originators of new carnations, but conscientiously believe 
their products are meritorious. The great dangers lies in over 
faith in their excellence. 

There is no possible way of determining the sterling com- 
mercial value of a carnation, but by general trial in different 
sections of the carnation belt. The storm center of interest and 
enthusiasm in carnation culture is wrapped up in new carnations, 
in their adaptability to localities and in their hidden possibilities 
they enfold, ardor, zeal, hopes, aspirations and poetry. Strike 
new carnations from the contingent of a grower's labor and it 
degenerates into dull routine and spiritless prose. Then, the few 
seeds from a single pod may contain the germ of a world winner. 
Henzie's White, the most robust and defiant carnation in the 
roster of the royal line, was in a pod incidentally plucked from a 
plant that had stood out all winter in the latitude of Detroit. 
Seeds in the same carnation capsule produce plants as divergent as 
seeds from different ones. It is estimated that not more than 
one carnation seedling in a thousand is honored by the growers 
of new varieties even with a name. About twenty-five new car- 
nations are introduced annually, and not more than one of these 
takes rank as a general favorite, like McGowen, Portia, Day- 
break, Scott, etc; so every first class commercial carnation is finally 
the selection of forty thousand seedlings. 



CHAPTER V. 

LIFE LIVES IN CELLS— CONTINUING LIFE BY CUTTINGS— THE 
CONDITIONS REQUIRED— DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A 
CUTTING AND A SEEDLING -KIND OF CUTTINGS- 
TIME TO STRIKE THEM. 

ACElyL is the unit of life. In a seed it lives in a single cell, 
with power to live and add to itself new cells. A poly- 
pus cut into a hundred parts, each piece will grow a per- 
fect polypus. An expert English propagator recently died in 
Chicago whose keen preception of required conditions, it is said, 
enabled him to root cuttings from any hard wood plant or tree 
that grows. In a cutting, life exists in many cells already formed 
with prove to multiply themselves. A slip severed from a par- 
ent plant faces death which only human sagacity prevents; experi- 
ence has demonstrated that if it is placed in pure sand with proper 
moisture, heat, light and air, it will develop roots and perpetuate 
itself. 

The law of life, as announced by the venerable Thomas Mee- 
han, has been vindicated by twenty years of observation, viz: 
"Nature in the vegetable kingdom always makes an effort to con- 
tinue life in the ratio of its danger of death." Extinction, or per- 
sistence, confronts cell life in a cutting, and it struggles for con- 
tinuance. The features, habits and all the qualities of a seedling 
carnation are fixed the moment ancestral life-forces meet, mix and 
mingle in a primal cell, in the ovarian crypt. That method of 
treating carnation cuttings and plants is the best which is closest 
along the line of character nature has impressed on the species. 

Henzie's carnation, the Napoleon of American whites, origi- 
nated in Detroit. It was the seedling of a plant that had remained 
out unprotected the previous winter, and the parent of millions of 
cuttings before it met its Waterloo against the resistless legions of 
better kinds. 



40 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

In cross-fertilization there is union by fission in the germ cell 
of two varieties, and a different entity of life is established. There 
is no difference between self-fertilization, and propagating by cut- 
tings; they both have the same plasm and spring from the same 
primordial cell, except homogenity which is lost by the union of 
diverse sexual forces. Propagating by cuttings is not devitalizing; 
production by seed is rejuvenating. 

The lack of knowledge of a carnation's nature has sent many 
good varieties early to the necropolis of extinct kinds. Buttercup 
was obtained by Chas. Starr from I^a Puritie, fertilized with the 
pollen of Astoria. The first carnation born in America by arti- 
ficial cross-fertilization is still cultivated. 

Dailledouze, Ward, Weber, and others say they now succeed 
fairly with Buttercup when grown through the summer under 
glass. If summer glass meets the erratic wants of capricious But- 
tercup, it will have found De Soto's fountain of perpetual youth, 
and its bewitching wealth of colors will perpetuate the name of 
Starr longer than the marble slab above his grave at Avondale. 

The vigor of a variety can be maintained indefinitely by 
careful culture, but new kinds will relegate them in the race of 
evolution. 

CUTTINGS. 
Successful carnation growing starts with the proper selection 
and treatment of cuttings. To secure vigor and avoid deterioration 
of plants and flowers, it is of the very first importance to begin 
with an absolutely healthy cutting. There is some difference of 
opinion among growers as to the part of the plant from which cut- 
tings should be taken. In a cutting is hidden the life forces of its 
parent plant, its merits and demerits, its weakness and its vigor; life 
in a cutting can raise no higher than its fountain, but may grade 
down, and emphasize its parents defects at the time it was taken 
from the parent stem. In this lies all there is in carnations run- 
ning out. The only question to consider is the health of the crop, 
and not the dogma of any grower. Cuttings should be taken from 
stock that has not been over forced, or fertilized. Cuttings four 
inches long taken as side shoots from flowering canes make good 



HANDIiING YOUNG CARNATION PLANTS. 



41 



cuttings and are at the same time a species of pruning and disbud- 
ding for crown flowers. Cuttings taken near the top of the 
plant contain in them more advanced flower germs than those se- 
cured at the base of the plant, and are more likely to bloom earlier. 
Aside from this fact it is immaterial from what part of the plant 
the cuttings are taken. The upper parts of plants have better 
light and ventilation and therefore are healthier than shoots around 
their base. No cutting^s showing signs of shooting a bud should 
be used. The cutting crop is usually considered secondary to the 
crop of bloom. Early struck cuttings should be carried from two 
into four-inch pots if necessary. 

The period of striking carnation cuttings is from August to 
April, Plants of later varieties, and those designed for early in- 
side, or out-of-door blooming, should be struck in the early part of 
this period. A rooted cutting advances a carnation's life ninety 
days over one germinated from a seed. 

HANDLING YOUNG CARNATION PLANTS. 




Figure 1.— Wrong position for a cutting in the sand. 



Figure 2.— The proper position. 



42 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

The propagating bench should be thoroughly cleansed, and 
a thin wash of lime spread over the bottom and sides, then filled with 
four inches of washed sand, absolutely free from all impurities, 
smoothed down; and incisions three inches apart should be made in 
the bed with a trowel, guided by a lath. In these incisions, the 
cuttings are deftly and vertically set, two inches deep and a 
half inch apart, the sand firmed with the point of the trowel 
along each line of cuttings and then thoroughly wet with a fine 
rose nozzle. 

Carnation cuttings in the sand should be moistened daily, 
have good ventilation, and be screened from the sun by a curtain 
of muslin, and not by laying paper or anything else over the top 
of the cuttings. In the proper temperature, the severed ends of 
the cuttings will at once begin to callous, or cover themselves 
with a root epidermis from which cell growth will rapidly elon- 
gate itself into roots. Cuttings will root in from two to four 
weeks. The variation of time rests with the varieties, and in the 
degree of top and bottom heat used. Ninety-five per cent 
of some varieties will root while of other kinds only about fifty 
per cent. 

Small growers often use flats filled with sand in the absence 
of a formal propagating bench. 

Before the cuttings are excessively rooted they should be 
carefully lifted and transferred to pots, or flats, in moderately en- 
riched sand}^ soil and kept in a temperature for a time but slight- 
ly lower than that of the bench from which they were removed, 
carried thriftily forward, and gradually hardened off for field cul- 
ture. 

Care should be taken in transferring plants from the sand to 
pots, or flats, that their fragile rootlets are not broken, as it takes 
time to repair the damage and works in the flats for them a re- 
newal of cutting bench methods. 

At first, two and a half-inch rose pots are preferred. They 
increase labor and care over flats, but are transplanted with less 
injury to the plants in the open ground. Flats, if used, should be 
two feet square, three inches deep, with four auger holes in the 



HANDLING YOUNG CARNATIONS. 43 

bottom for drainage. The rooted cuttings should be planted in 
the flats in exact rows, two and a half inches apart, each way, 
and the soil moderately firmed between them. The flats should be 
transferred to the field. With a sharp case knife, cut equal 
distance each way, between the rows of plants, to the bottom of 
the flat, and if properly rooted, each plant will lift out with a ball 
of earth adhering to its roots. 

Some successful growers, as a precautionary measure against 
"Rust," immerse their cuttings both before they are inserted in 
and after they are taken from the sand in a fungicide solution; 
care being taken not to involve the severed ends, or rootlets in 
the mixture. 

An effective formula for such a wash consists of 

Potash I lb. 

Fish Oil 3 pts. 

Water 2 gals. 

Prof. Baily has experimented with a number of cuttings 
taken from three different parts of a plant as follows: — 

I St. — Bottom shoots make vigorous plants with broader 
leaves, stockier stems than any others, and are fuller of bud germs, 
but bloom later. 

2nd. — Lateral shoots from stems are less robust, have narrow 
leaves, but bloom as freely as the first kind. 

3d. — Cuttings taken from the base of plants are weak, poor, 
and without much bloom or promise. 

There are carnation plants lifted late preternaturally robust 
and strong, with leaves and stems that are diseased. Their 
vegetative vigor has partially extinguished their reproductive 
forces. A fat cow gives but little milk. Nature is frugal: when it 
lavishes in one direction it economizes in another. If undue vital 
forces of a carnation plant are expended on the leaves and stems, it 
saves up on petals and stamens, which are but modified leaves. 
The equilibration of their vegetative and reproductive forces is 
destroyed, and petals are aborted in the interest of leaves, and flowers 
in favor of foliage. In high grade flowers on diminutive plants, un- 
der summer glass, these functions of plant life are just reversed. 



44 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

Cuttings taken from either class of such plants will perpetuate, 
for a time, these features of their parents, being comparatively 
barren or tentatively fruitful of flowers. 

Propagating by cuttings is not an unnatural process for con- 
tinuing species. Nature adopts it in the segmentary process of 
many plants, and by the agamic process in the lower orders of 
the zoophyte kingdom. The greenfly largely perpetuates itself by 
nodules that develope themselves on the inside of the walls of 
their abdomen, from which they separate, and are born living 
insects. 

TEMPERATURE. 

The temperature employed in striking cuttings is a matter on 
which growers do not fully agree, but it can be largely settled by 
the laws of vegetable physiology. It is presumption for any 
one man to say this is the proper temperature, or that is the 
better cutting, if it is not along the lines of plant life. The 
temperature for the cutting bench should, for a few^ days, be no 
higher than that in which the plants were kept, from which the 
cuttings were taken. 

The heat used for rooting varies with different propagators. 
Some use no bottom heat, maintaining merely the common green- 
house temperature of 65 to 70 degrees; others use bottom heat, the 
sand being 10 degrees above the house heat. The ideal tempera- 
ture for rooting cuttings is 60 degrees for the sand and 40 degrees 
for the house. 



CHAPTER VI. 

CARNATIONS IN THE FIEIvD— PREPARATIONS FOR THEIR FIEIvD 

LIFE— THE SANITARIUM FOR CARNATIONS— PRECAUTIONS 

AGAINST FAILURE— NUMBER OF PLANTS GROWN 

TO AN ACRE. 

THERE has been a profusion of literature about the soil suit- 
ed to the carnation plant. With data gathered through 
years and as comprehensive as the carnation field of 
America, the author is not disposed to attach to the soil the import- 
ance that has been given to it. Soil is the most tangible thing an 
observer sees to ascribe success, or failure with carnations, which 
is the source of its prominence. 

It is an unquestioned fact that carnations reach high develop- 
ment in sandy loam, limestone, argillacious and micaceous soils. 
The Massachusetts experimental station has grown superior carna- 
tions in coal ashes and peat. Every carnation grower has his pre- 
ferred soil, and it is always the kind in which he has made a success 
in growing them. My ideal carnation field would be a sandy loam 
with an adhesive element of clay, with a northern inclination. 

There are but few points on which American carnation grow- 
ers are a unit. One is that the plants should be set in the field 
for summer growth as soon as the condition of the ground and 
weather in the spring will permit. 

The open field is the sanitarium of carnation plants. It 
brings them for a time in close touch with the great healthy heart 
of nature where they receive a fresh baptism in the eternal flame 
of life. Mythology says that Antaeus received new strength every 
time he kissed his mother earth. In the ratio of distance, in treat- 
ment or geography, plants are removed from their normal condi- 
tions and natural habit, they sport. Their natures become infertile 
and they refuse to continue their species; the carnation is largely 
seedless as most all double flowers are. 



46 AMERICAN CARNATIOIS' CULTURE. 

The carnation plat, if it does not possess a gravelly or sandy 
sub-soil, must be well underdrained, given a coat of well rotted 
manure, and, as a precaution against stem-rot, a light spread of 
lime or wood ashes. The ground should be deeply plowed, thor- 
oughly pulverized, evenly rolled and acurately marked out, ten 
inches each way for a hand cultivator, and ten inches by three feet 
for horse cultivator, cavities being made at the cross sections of 
the markings with a half-round trowel in which the roots are in- 
serted, the dirt pulled around them and made firm with the fingers. 
If the field is of doubtful sub-drainage, planting the carnations 
on slightly elevated ridges may fortify the crop of plants against 
great damage from excess of wet. The time for transplanting 
carnations in the field in the carnation zone ranges from the loth 
of April to the loth of May. Frost or a moderate freeze will not 
injure the plants if they are properly "hardened off", which can 
not be determined by the appearance of the plants, but by the treat- 
ment they have received in their transition from greenhouse heat 
to outside temperature. The hardiest plants may be killed in 
being transferred at once from under greenhouse glass to the open 
ground. The average of a carnation's life in the field is four 
months; during this time the ground should be frequently super- 
ficially stirred. The hand cultivator is altogether the preferable 
implement, but when the acreage is large it is laborious. The ac- 
cepted and rational principle applied to crops in agriculture, as to 
rotation, applies with equal force to carnations, not however on the 
ground of food elements in the soil being exhausted by the crop, 
but on the theory that every species of vegetation grown long on 
one spot attracts hordes of its own particular insectivorous and bac- 
terial enemies to the place as a base of supply and breeding 
grounds. 

The "greenfly," "thrips," "root nematoides," wet and dry 
"stem rot," are caused by insectivorous and bacterial germs, 
that especially find congenial food in the Dianthus genus of 
plants. Changing the location of carnation fields must disarrange 
their multiplication. The Dianthus family of plants are hardy in 
the temperate zone. Adaptation by selection is breeding carnations 



NUMBER OF PLANTS TO THE ACBE. 47 

from their ancestral nature, but many parental vestiges will never 
be eliminated from them. A black colored soil will maintain six to 
eight degrees higher surface summer heat than a light colored 
soil. Observing growers have noticed that vegetative processes are 
as completely arrested in carnation plants during extreme periods of 
summer heat as if the thermometer indicated 32 degrees. For this 
reason a northern inclination of a carnation field is to be preferred 
and is a concession to the low temperature relic that still lingers 
in carnations. 

Carnations in the field are subject to all the troubles that as- 
sail them on the benches, but the vigor of life from normal condi- 
tions, forms a greater resistance to their depredations than the 
artificial restraints of housed plants. The fungus of "root rot" is 
the most destructive enemy of carnations in the field. There are 
records of a large per cent of the crop of plants being ruined by 
this parasite. (See chapter on fungous diseases of carnations). 
When it is deemed necessary to use liquid fungicides, insecticides, 
or fertilizers on carnations in the field, the rows of plants can be 
straddled by a hand cart, holding a vessel containing the material, 
and with a good spray pump, quite a broad span of the plants can 
be reached. Incarnation fields of large area, an eight foot road- 
way is left unplanted at convenient widths for a horse and cart 
hauling a barrel, for watering or treating the plants medicinally^ 
It should not be forgotten that stirring the soil is a partial antidote 
for drouth in all soils sufficiently compact to admit of the capillary 
attraction of sub- surface moisture. 

The number of carnation plants that can be grown on an acre, 
set fifteen inches apart each way, for hand culture, is nearly 28,- 
000. If planted six inches apart in the rows, and the rows three 
feet apart for horse cultivation, about the same number can be 
grown. 



CHAPTER VII. 

CARNATIONS FROM THE FIELD TO THE BEDS OR BENCHES- 
EARLY AND LATE LIFTING— WET AND DRY WEATHER 
—BENCH PLANTING— WATERING AND SHADING. 

THERE has been a revolution in the last few years in regard 
to the time of housing field carnations. Many are now 
lifted as early as August. They bloom earlier and find 
a better market. Mr. Hartshorn, an up-to-date grower, com- 
manding a good market, houses his carnations by the first of 
July, allowing them only eight or ten weeks of field life and 
claims he has splendid results. Some growers do not plant in 
the open ground, but turn their plants out of the pots into bench 
soil in April and grow them continuously under glass where they 
commence blooming about the first of October. The advocates 
of this system and its modifications, assert that they obtain a higher 
grade of flowers, strike a scarcer market, and realize a better price, 
which fully compensates for the additional cost and labor the 
plan involves. 

A solution of the rebus for obtaining a supply of carnation 
flowers from July to November is involved in the unquestioned 
law of vegetable physiology, viz: 

''Each species of plants 7'equnes a certain number of 2inits of 
heat and light to co?nplete its course of vegetatio7i. The mean 
temperature a7id sunlight nudtiplied by the 7iumber of days gives the 
sum of heat and light requii ed for its develope77ient. If the mea7i 
te77iperature and light is lowered, the 7iu77iber of days must be i7i- 
creased; if inc7 eased, the 7iumber of days 77iust be lowe7'ed.''^ 

A carnation cutting struck in January, will ordinarly bloom 
in November. If it was struck two, four, or six months earlier, 
would it not, according to the quoted law, reach its blooming 
period correspondingly earlier, abating the loss of heat and light 
for winter days ? I am not aware of well defined experiments 



EARIiY AND LATE LIFTING. 49 

on this line, but it opens up quite a field and may solve the 
question of growing carnations under glass, early and late lifting, 
and a constant and uniform succession of carnation flowers. 

Carnations are now generally lifted between the first of 
August and the fifteenth of September. A successful grower 
thus summarizes his pmctice : "I strike my cuttings the first of 
January, plant them out as soon as the weather permits and lift 
them the first of September. Keep the house at night at a tem- 
perature of 50 degrees and day heat at 65 degrees. Fertilize them 
with old cow manure, mixed with ground bone and air-slacked 
lime, and I never fail to have a full crop of bloom at Christmas 
and Easter." 

Carnations can be rapidly lifted in the field with a light con- 
cave spade and, as raised, grasped by a helper, and without adher- 
ing dirt, laid parallel in boxes of convenient size. It requires 
five men to lift, transfer and bench plants rapidly. It was an 
early custom to plant in clay soil and lift the plant with a ball of 
dirt around its roots. Experience has demonstrated that there is 
no advantage in this mode and it greatly adds to the labor. 

An extensive grower says he prefers to lift his carnations in 
dry weather. To use his own language, "They stand in need of 
drink, absorb the water given them, wilt and blight less than 
when transplanted from wet soil." There is a vestige of vege- 
table biology in this assumption. A plant from a dry soil is not 
distended with fluids and would apparently, if not really, suffer 
less wilting on the suspended absorbtion of fluids by the roots 
that inevitably follows transplanting. This interrupted absorb- 
tion is compensated to an extent by shading and a drenching wet- 
ting given carnations on their removal to the house. Wet and 
shade closes the plant's stomata, or the exhaling pores, and 
arrests the evaporation of its fluids. There is no philosophy that 
controverts the assumption that plants should be transferred from 
the field to the benches with as little shock to their vegetable 
system as is possible. 

Excavations are made in the pulverized bench soil to the 
bottom and the roots of the plants inserted to the depth they 
grew in the field, the soil being pulled around and firmly pressed 



50 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE 

with the fingers. The plants are set eight or ten inches apart each 
way and two inches from the edge of the bench. Some knowl- 
edge of the dwarfer and grosser growing kinds is a factor in the 
planting distances. Plants should be graded as to the size, and 
the smaller ones from the field potted to fill vacancies that may 
occur on the benches, and if carried cold through the winter, will 
make magnificent blooming pot plants in the spring. No car- 
nation will give satisfaction in less than a six- inch pot. Soil on 
the benches should be not less than five inches deep and but little 
richer than that in the field. A rich soil is detrimental to the 
plants until they are established and begin to feed. 

The carnation is a well defined biennial ; the leading pecul- 
iarity of a biennial is that it lives two years, interrupted midway 
in its life by the coma of a winter's cold. The forces of its life in 
these two seasons have entirely a different trend The first 
season is devoted exclusively to the vegetative developement of 
the plant ; the second season, its life is given over to reproductive 
energies, to strenous efforts to continue its species of which flowers 
are incident. 

All biennials have a vegetative and a reproductive stage of 
life and a coma of life's forces between these stages. They can 
then be lifted and replanted without the least disturbance of vital 
activities When the vegetative stage has culminated, is the time 
to lift carnations; it may be difficult to determine that stage, but 
this is the last analysis of the lifting question. It is also a solu- 
tion of why carnations that even approach the torpor stage in 
biennial life can bear removal, as no annual or perennial will. 

Adaptation by selection and greenhouse methods have con- 
verted the carnation into an annual with a lengthened season; 
but its stages of life will ever be marked with puberty and 
adolescence and maturity, vegetative ana reproductive forces^ in the 
biography of its life. Frequently these two vital energies become 
deranged and abnormally developed. Every grower has met 
with great, strong, robust carnation plants comparatively sterile 
of flowers. The vegetative energ}^ has extinguished its 7'eprodnctive 
life, consequently the plant is diseased. In growing carnations 



CARNATION NOBWAY. 



51 



under glass through the summer, the augmented units of sun- 
light and heat abnormally develops the plant's reproductive forces, 
and the large flowers are the products of a destroyed equilibrium 
in the plant's natural and healthful momentums. 




NORWAY. 

This carnation originated with Webber & Son, of Oakland, Md., and 
first disseminated in 1901. 



CHAPTER vm. 

SOLID BEDS-SUB-WATERING BEDS— RAISED BENCHES WITH 

WOODEN, SLATE AND TILE BOTTOMS— TESTIMONY 

OF CARNATION GROWERS— SOIL FOR BEDS 

AND BENCHES. 

THERE are but two fundi mental principles in the con- 
struction of beds or benches for carnations in the house. 
They involve sub and surface heat to the roots of the plants. 
The old style wooden bench is too well known to need a descrip- 
tion. It may be constructed chiefly of iron with a slate or tile bot- 
tom. Messrs. Bassett and Washburn prefer an elevated bench 
bottomed with two-inch drain tile, laid close together, and sup- 
ported by cross timber corresponding to the length of the tile. The 
Vessy bench has advocates and theoretically possesses some mer- 
its. I give the originator's description. 

"We raise the surface of the ground twelve to twenty-four 
inches as desired, and hold it in place on each side of walk with two- 
inch hemlock, well coated with cement on the inside. This bed is 
made level and firm. Upon this we lay four-inch common drain 
tiles as close together as they can be laid. Above this we put 
hemlock side boards eight inches wide to hold the soil for plants, 
which is put upon the tiles. The boards above and below are 
held in position by two by four pieces at the ends of the boards, 
and are stayed across at intervals of about four feet with strong 
galvanized wire. This bed affords perfect drainage, a cool, airy 
bottom, lasts longer an:l holds a greater weight than do raised 
benches of wood with tile bottoms." 

Beds for carnations can be made directly on the floor of the 
house. They can be elevated eighteen -inches to two feet on com- 
mon earth laterally supported by a cemented course of brick or 
planks, which adds to the convenience of the constant attention 
they require during their in-door life. 

The sub-watering bed is described and illustrated in the 
chapter under that head. Solid beds and raised benches are still 



TESTIMONY OF CARNATION GROWERS. 53 

in their disputative era. It is possible that the most practical 
and economical house bed, or bench, for carnations, has not yet 
been evolved, and habits of varieties may yet determine it. 

An experienced grower on both beds and benches writes: 
"Bradt and Olympia will not do on solid beds. I find no difference 
between Gomez and Croker on beds or benches. White Cloud has 
done the best of any of the whites on beds " 

Another observing grower, on both beds and benches, vSays: 
*'I do not get as many flowers off of my carnations in beds as on the 
benches by ten per cent, but this loss is fully retrieved by less 
care for the plants and less cost of beds than benches." 

A medley of opinions from leading growers as to the relative 
merits of solid beds and raised benches, for raising: carnations, like 
the following have been received, which shows that the question has 

not yet crystallized into a uniform or scientific shape. "Carna- 
tions are more disposed to burst their calyxes on solid beds." 
"Carnations grow with great vigor on solid beds but produce less 
flowers." ' 'I like beds for some varieties and benches for others." 
"I want no beds." '*I would change all my benches to beds if 
my houses were suited for it." "Beds are better in the summer, 
and benches in the winter. ' ' 

There are a few unquestioned facts relative to beds and 
benches for carnations. Beds are the cheapest in the long run, a 
more uniform moisture is maintained for the roots; they require 
less attention to watering, the plants are more robust, and if they 
produce less early, they yield more flowers later; the crop of bloom 
cannot be so well forced on beds; though more vigorous they are 
not as a consequence more florescent. Some varieties of carnations 
may improve on one or the other of these conditions, but the list 
is not determined. Benches generally are more elevated, and more 
convenient for working with the plants; the heating pipes are by 
the side, or a few inches beneath the bottom of the benches, 
and the forcing of the susceptible nature of this plant is placed 
under immediate control. Plants on benches are nearer the 
glass; the roots subjected, if desired, to more or less heat; restricted 
as to quanity of earth; all three of these tend to develop the re- 
productive features of the plants which culminate into flowers. 



54 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

Beds, benches, growing under glass, and a knowledge of the 
blooming periods of varieties are the four factors destined to solve 
the problem of a constant and uniform succession of carnation 
bloom. God gave the plant. It is for man to evolve the plan. 
There are enough facts and physiology now possessed to inaugu- 
rate it within a year. 

soil. FOR BED AND BENCHES. 

The depth of the soil on the benches has passed through its 
controversial era; it was fought on the extremes of from two and 
one half to eight inches, and each had advocates; five inches is 
now accepted as the economic mean. Whatever mode is adopted 
to sustain the soil, sub-drainage must be perfect, the soil vshould be 
compact and not too rich in humus. It is easy to supply fertilizers 
and difi&cult to diminish them. Some growers displace all the 
bench soil every year, and substitute fresh; others remove a part 
and add a proportional amount of new soil. This practice does not 
arise from an impoverishment of the bench soil by the crop, but 
as a matter of precaution again.st possible bacterial germs in the 
old soil. 

Science has long known and experience has proved that soils 
contain countless microscopic bacterial organisms. Some classes 
of these microbes promote vegetative growth by transforming the 
nitrogen of humus into a condition to be absorbed by the roots, 
and assimilated by the plant. They are nitrogenizing microbes, 
and are beneficial to plant life. 

There is a different class of germs in all soils that work just 
opposite results. Their function in life is to dissipate nitrogen and 
starve the plant They are de-nitrogenizing microbes. The heat 
and moisture maintained in greenhouses, makes culture beds for 
these prenicious soil germs. Experience has proven that safety 
against them is in the annual substitution of fresh soil. No soil for 
benches is better than old disintegrated sods from an old pasture, but 
never taken from near trees, fences or hedges. There the sod or 
soil is full of microbes, pupas, and puncturing pests. After being 
transplanted, carnation plants should be shaded from the direct 



HOW TO SHADE CARNATIONS. 55 

sun for a week or ten days. A deep shading for the glass, lasting 
a brief period, is made of lime and water, or yellow clay, thinned 
with water, strained and applied with a brush or spray pump. A 
more permanent shading is made of naptha and white lead, re- 
duced to the appearance and consistency of skimmed milk, applied 
moderately at first, and deepened as the sun in the spring gains 
power. 

I quote from M. G. Kains, a very intelligent view on shading 
glass over carnations with preparations of lead and the means to 
be used in removing the same, 

' 'The removal of white lead from greenhouse roofs is a tedious 
and more or less difficult job The florist should welcome any 
method that will lighten this labor and reduce the risk of the 
breakage of glass. When this shading is to be applied as a liquid 
with naptha, by means of a spray pump, the powdered paint 
should be purchased; not the paint as it is usually bought in drums 
or cans. If the latter be used the shade will be much harder to 
remove in any case, and the method of removing it described be- 
low will work much less effectively. The reason for this is that 
the oil in the mixed paint forms a coating of itself upon the glass, 
independent of the lead , and is not acted upon by the acetic acid 
used to remove the lead, only a portion of which can be reached. 
If adulterated white lead be used the recipe will be useless, be- 
cause the adulterant commonly used in white lead is barium sul- 
phate, a substance not soluble in acetic acid. 

When pure lead is used, mix one part of strong vinegar to 
four of water, or one part of acetic acid to about fifteen of water, 
and apply with a fine nozzle direct to the roof. If any drips down 
it may be used over again since it will have been applied too copi- 
ously. Some of the white lead will have been dissolved in this 
drip and it will not be quite so effective a second time. After ap- 
plication, the usual rubbing may commence, when it will be found 
that the shade will come off much more easily. The reason for 
this is that the white lead is changed from the basic carbonate to 
the acetate, which is very soluble in water. Water coupled with 
friction will, therefore, easily remove it." 



CHAPTER IX. 

TYING UP OR SUPPORTING CARNATION FLOWERING STEMS- 
DISBUDDING CARNATIONS-A CONSERVATION OF VITAL 
FORCES— A MATTER OF MARKET. 

THERE have been as many schemes for supporting earn a- 
tion canes as patents on washing machines, but few of 
which have escaped the observation of the writer. The 
future may evolve a more simple and convenient mode than that 
of Mr. Dorner's; but in convenience, neatness, and inexpensive- 
ness it has, as yet, not been excelled. This or some other sup- 
port should be given carnation plants as soon as convenient after 
they are benched. In the plan above alluded to, the plants are put 
in the rows alternately, so that they run in diagonal lines across 
the bed. At the ends of the beds and at intervals of about twelve 
feet along them a light wooden bar, supported at either side by an 
upright, crosses the bed about ten inches from the surface. This 
supports a galvanized wire along each row of plants, the wire be- 
ing fastened at the ends, while the cross-bars along the bed receive 
each wire in a little nick which keeps it from slipping. The tying 
material is cotton string, which is worked across the bed from one 
side to the other diagonally, making it appear in a series of tri- 
angles. The tying is very quickly done by two men, one at either 
side passing the string across; it is given a loop over at each wire. 
The great convenience of this system is that while supporting the 
plant it is not crowded up together, and the string is not in the 
way when picking flowers. For very tall growers, a second wire 
may be added above the first. 

A crown flower issues from the top of the main stem of a 
carnation plant. A terminal bud or flower is the leading one from 
a side shoot of the stem. 

Some varieties of carnations are given to blow crown flowers; 
such kinds need but little attention in the matter of disbudding; 



A MATTER OF MARKET. 57 

other kinds start profusely axillar}' stems. The plant is incapable 
of maturing all the buds that are thus projected into salable flowers. 
Disbudding is merely a species of pruning, and should be done as 
soon as the lateral buds begin to develop on the cane. It diverts 
the flow of the plant's blood from many buds into one or a few, 
thus increasing the size of the flower, the substance of its petals, 
the length of the stem, its value in the market, conserves the vigor 
of the plant, and builds up the florist's reputation for good stock. 

The last analysis of a carnation flower with a florist is "How 
much money is there in it ?" He deals in poetry, but his trade is 
prose. The question with him is whether he can get as much 
money for one high grade carnation bloom as he can for half a 
dozen poor ones. Disbudding is a matter of market. 

There are always three grades of carnation flow^ers, poor ones 
that no one wants, good ones that everybody buys, fine ones that 
everybody adores and money purchases. 

There is not as much waste by the process of disbudding as 
one might superficially suppose. It wonderfully preserves the vigor 
of the plant, its capacity for a renewal of stems and flowers, and 
its vitality is retained to repeat florescence. All vegetable physi- 
ologists are aware that the only aim of a plant's life is to perpetuate 
itself in vital seeds. When this is done its life-mission is ended, 
the culmination of its vital forces is reached in elaborating pro- 
tein compounds and crystalizing them into seeds as nutriment for 
its embryonic progeny. If a carnation plant is early disbudded, this 
crucial period of its life is partially relieved and its energies 
prolonged An initial bud, with all its parts, is yet but imper- 
fectly modified leaves. Experiments have been made as to the 
probable extent to which the remaining buds and their unfolded 
petals are benefitted on a healthy plant by judicious disbudding. 
It will increase the diameter of the crown flower one inch and 
the terminal flower half an inch. 



CHAPTER X. 

PROFESSOR ARTHUR ON PLANT RESPIRATION— SURFACE VIEW 
OF EPIDERMAL CELLS OF A CARNATION LEAF— SEC- 
TIONAL CUTS THROUGH A CARNATION STOMA— 
PHYSIOLOGICAL DEMANDS OF CARNATIONS 
FOR FRESH AIR. 

DEFICIENT ventilation has been, and still is one of the 
great errors in the successful cultivation of carnations. 
If there is one thing the anatomical organs and a knowl- 
edge of their functions teach, it is an unlimited amount of fresh 
air, a comparatively dry atmosphere for the foliage, and a mod- 
erate supply of moisture for their roots. This is the implication 
of the plant's structure. Its physiology, and forty years of costly 
experimental processes have proven these postulates true. Some 
species of plants rely exclusively for their support on elements 
drawn from the atmosphere. The ancestral forms of Dianthus 
life were, and are, habitats of high, dry and cool latitudes. If he- 
redity is a factor in vegetable life, the foliage of their progeny 
must love air and their roots have an aversion to an excess of 
water. 

They are most florescent and healthy in the fall and spring 
months, when the ventilators are open, and fresh air is freest. 
Cool air is not necessarily pure air, but it is commonly accepted 
as an equivalent for ventilation. Ventilators should be raised in 
carnation houses and fire started when the mercury falls below 
forty degrees outside. 

I am pleased to accept Professor Arthur's views on the anat- 
omy and respiratory functions of carnation plants, but entirely dis- 
sent from his conclusion that their nature warrants a system of 
sub- watering as being in harmony with any known law governing 
this plant's nature. 



THE DEMAND FOR FRESH AIR. 59 

The breathing pores number thousands on every carnation 
leaf, and exist on both the upper and lower surface of the leaf, 
which is not the case in many species of plants. They are sim- 
ply mouths or nostrils leading down between the cells which 
make the tissue of the leaf Through these openings is exhaled 
oxygen gas, and effete poisonous elements in the form of vapor; 
and they inhale carbonic acid gas, and healthy tissue-building 
material in atmospherical form. 




Fig. 1. Surface view of a carnation leaf under very strong magnification, show- 
ing the epidermal cells and the round openings leading to the stomata. 

A man requires 250 cubic feet of air every hour to supply 
his system with the needed amount of oxygen, and his blood is 
distributed over 1400 superficial feet of cell surface in the lungs 
to absorb from the air inhaled this essential life-giving element. 

The vegetable blood of a carnation plant is distributed over 
an area of cell walls in its foliage a thousand times geater than 
its leaf surface, for precisely the same purpose as in an animal but 
with reversed function. The plant expires oxygen and inhales 
carbonic oxide. An almost air-tight glass house holding thous- 
ands of breathing carnation plants would be speedily exhausted 
of its supply of plant air and they would soon suffocate in their 
own poisonous exhalations. 

This simple automatic arrangement of nature is open only to 
the entrance and exit of vaporal forms. Leaves do not absorb 



60 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

water — darkness and water close the valves of these breathing 
plant's mouths. Careful experiments have determined that one 
superficial foot of leaf surface exhales one and one-fourth ounces 
of vapor in twelve hours of sunshine. Light lifts the valves and 
opens the throttles for plant respiration. Darkness, rain and dew 
closes the pores and maintains merely and equilibrium of plant 




Fig. 2. — Section taken at right angles to the surface through a stoma. The guard- 
cells, forming the automatic valves, are shown touching each other, so that the stoma 
passage is closed. The epidermal cells are empty, but the outer vsrall is excessively thick. 

circulation. This is an explanation for not spraying carnations 
in cloudy weather, in the absence of the drying rays of the sun. 
Wilted plants are fresh and full of sap after a night of dark- 
ness and dew, because they have absorbed fluids by the root, and 
exhaled none in the form of vapor by the leaves. They have 
been breathless, in a coma, waiting for the sorcery of sun light to 
stir the magic forces of life into active circulation. 



CHAPTER XI. 

OVERHEAD WATERING— SURFACE WATERING -SUB-WATERING 
- CUT OF A CROSS SECTION OF A SUB- WATERING BENCH 
— REIvATlVE COST OF BENCHES AND BEDS- 
OPINIONS OF THEIR MERITS. 

THE amount of moisture a plant requires for its health and 
development is in ratio to the area of its leaf surface. 
Nature never makes a mistake in proportioning organs or 
in the assignment of their functions. It is the function of roots to 
absorb water from the earth and for the leaves to exhale it in the 
form of vapor. Leaf surface is an unfaiHng indication of the 
volume of liquid vegetable blood required in a plant's circulation. 
The spacious leafed banana growing in the humid section of the 
tropics, and the leafless cacti growing in an arid region, are indices 
ol the demands of their structure for moisture, and of the capac- 
ity of their roots to absorb it. 

Some plants demand more water than others. Water is the 
means by which floats to every part of the plant the dissolved nu- 
triments to build the skeleton of its structure. An adult sun- 
flower evaporates a quart of water daily; a large oak, one hundred 
and fifty gallons, or three barrels. These plants have unobstructed 
capillary tubes, an arterial and veinous system through which their 
watery blood flows in volume. It is estimated that twenty-five 
pounds of water must circulate through the system of a plant to 
deposit one ounce of dry matter. 

A carnation is neither a sunflower nor an oak. Its circulatory 
system differs from them. It has no heart to pump the blood 
through its system, a vis f route and vis tergo, is but indifferently 
developed, and the volume of fluid in its system is small, being 
one-half less than in aquatic plants. The structure of a carnation 
like many other plants is composed of cells. The stems and root 



62 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

were primarily vascular, and converted into hard structures by- 
collapsed cells. 

The circulation of a carnation is effected by the transfusion 
of its blood through the permeable cell walls of its structure, by 
exosmosis and endosmosis. The process is slow and forbids the 
assumption that its nature can dispose of much water, -and asserts 
with its small area of leaf surface, that it is on the dry side of the 
average class of nature's plants. 

Forty years of experimental carnation growing in this country 
has reached one unquestioned conclusion. It is, moderate moisture 
for its roots and fairly dry atmosphere for its foliage. 

OVKR-HEAD WATERING. 

The foliage of healthy carnations is covered with a thin 
waxy substance called bloom. It varies in color from a steel 
blue to a sea green. It seems to be a shield against moisture, 
it is impervious and sheds water like the oiled feathers on a duck's 
back. The purpose of this wet resisting bloom is not definitely 
understood, but it can safely be taken as a warning against an 
excess of foliage moisture. 

The most progressive and successful gro vvers never over-head 
water their carnations after the flush given them on their removal 
to the benches from the field. The physiological reason is not very 
obvious unless it resides in the fact that wet closes the automatic 
valves of the plant's exhaling organs and for a time arrests the 
breathing functions of the foliage, and thereby for the nonce 
gives spores and germs less vital resistance to their depredations. 
It is a known fact that leaf moisture favors the vegetation of 
rust spores. When it is deemed necessary to spray carnations with 
liquid germicides, or insecticides, or with water for other reasons, it 
should be done on a clear sunny morning, that the foliage may 
dry as soon as possible. 

SURFACE WATERING. 

The system of surface watering most approved is between 
the rows of the benched carnations keeping the nozzle of the 
hose close to the ground and with a force of water that will splash 



SUB-WATERINO. 



63 



the foliage as little as possible. This can best be accomplished 
by attaching the hose to three feet or less of half-inch metallic 
pipe. A system that has several reasons to commend, is to 
make a moderate furrow midway between each carnation row 
across the bench, and let the water from the hose flow into this 
furrow. It saves the lower foliage of the plants, which is most 
likely to be damaged from becoming wet, and takes it the 
longest to dry. 

SUB-WATERING. 
Professor Arthur is entitled to the initial credit, if any is due, 
for the system of sub- watering carnations. As it is difficult to 
briefly convey an understanding of this mode of supplying water 
to carnation roots, I give a figure of Arthur's plan. 









■':ev^ 




I^'^S'JI'-'Iy 




Fig. 3. — Cross-section of bench for sub-watering: a glass tube forming a water gauge; 
d vertical tube for conveying water to the pan; c layer of brick standing on the zinc- 
lined bottom, and supporting the soil above. (From Ind Exper. Sta., Bui. No. 66.) 



The bench is fitted with a water-tight lining of zinc, on the 
bottom of which are placed, on their edges, moderately soft brick 
with their lower angles chipped off to permit freer movement of 
the water between them. On the top of these bricks is thrown 
the bench soil in which the usual methods are followed. 

It is known that carnation plants of the L,a Puritie type are 
almost an immune against a water famine, and no plants so 



64 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

quickly recover from a drouth, and with as little damage to them- 
selves as carnations. 

The structure of the carnation plant does not teach any ne- 
cessity for a constant supply of water at its roots, while that of 
celery does. Benched carnations often suffer from great dryness 
at the bottom of the bench, but no philosophy can urge an unnatural 
system of watering to supply the negligence of a grower. There 
is much care and labor in keeping a proper moisture in a green- 
house through the summer months. By the rapid conversion of 
moisture into vapor by the summer sun there is an immense 
volume of latent caloric absorbed; and for growing carnations un- 
der glass in summer, Prof. Arthur's system may be a species of 
automatic refrigeration of the locql atmosphere and surface tem- 
perature in which the plants may flourish, but the method is total- 
ly untenable on the grounds urged by the Professor, viz: "that the 
nature of carnations require a constant supply oi water at the 
roots." 

The proposed sub-watering system created some sensation 
among growers. I have been diligent in obtaining results from 
those who have attempted the plan, Mr. Dale says he can see no 
difference in carnations under the two methods. There is as 
much danger in ove7' watering by the new system as there is in 
lender watering by the old method. 

Dorner & Son say they cannot observe much difference be 
tween the super and S7ib system of watering carnations: some 
varieties it benefits, to others it is detrimental. 

J. H. Dillon has compared experimentally the comparative 
cost of a sub- watering bed and the ordinary wooden bench, and 
finds the latter, four and one-half feet wide, costs fifteen cents a 
lineal foot, and a sub-watering bed, thirty cents a lineal foot. 
The sub-watering system is yet in its experimental stage and it 
is a question if it ever gets beyond it. 



CHAPTER XII. 

TOPPING CARNATIONS -SHIPPING FIvOWERS AND ROOTED 
CUTTINGS— ENIGMA OF FLOWERS "GOING TO SIvEEP"— 
OPINIONS OF CARNATION SPECIALISTS- 
FUNCTION OF PETALS. 

CARNATION plants in pots, flats, or fields, should not be 
permitted to mature flower buds. Most plants that at- 
tempt such premature maturity are taken from near the 
top of the mother plant. All the vital energies of a plant are di- 
verted to the processes of perfecting seed, and, incidentally, flowers. 
When they bud in a small cutting, those life forces must be ar- 
rested and diverted to vegetative growth, and not to reproductive 
efforts. 

In topping carnations, some cut with a knife, others pinch 
off the tender top, others pull out the center stems. The 
better mode is to seize the stem with the thumb and finger be- 
low the rupture to counter-poise the pulling force. The time to 
top carnations grown for winter blooming is on the appearance of 
a flower bud. Some growers remove all incipient buds from 
mature plants when they are lifted in the field for the benches, 
claiming with reason, that good flowers can not be obtained from 
buds started in the field and matured in the house. 

CUTTING AND KEEPING CARNATION BLOOMS. 

Carnation flowers must open full on the stems and the petals 
reach a proper stage of maturity, to be lasting when picked, 
"going to sleep," or "early wilting" of carnation flowers de- 
pends on the hygrometric condition of the plant that produces 
them, and a corresponding condition of the petals of its flowers. 
A proper flower from a non-dropsical plant may maintain a pre- 
sentable condition for three weeks. 



66 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE, 

Carnation flowers should be cut in the morning and always 
before fumigation; the stems immersed in small vases filled with 
water and kept in a cool dry room until ready for market. They 
should be packed in nice clean boxes, not more than 250 in a 
mass, and dispatched to reach the commission man early in the 
day. 

An experienced dealer in cut carnation flowers writes: "The 
temperature in which carnation flowers should be kept after they 
are cut is 50 degrees, in a dry, clean, well ventilated room. A 
refrigerator, cooled with ice, is the worst place possible to pre- 
serve carnation blooms. The atmosphere is damp and damaging, 
when they are taken out, their moisture rapidly evaporates and the 
flowers 'go to sleep.' " 

Carnation flowers may be cut too soon, or too late, to keep 
well. If they are cut after they are fertilized or before their 
structural cells are developed, they quickly wither. A concensus 
of the most intelligent opinions and experiences on this import- 
ant point is, if cut sometime before maturity and allowed to stay 
in water for several hours before shipping, they will invariably 
improve and appear to better advantage after the dealer receives 
them. Keep carnations and all flowers in a large, airy cellar, 
avoid putting them in an ice-box, and have at all times a good 
circulation of fresh air; and, above all things, avoid a close, 
stuffy atmosphere. 

Regarding the temperature for keeping carnation flowers 
after they are cut, experience has been that an average of 50 
degrees is the best, in conjunction with a dry, healthy atmosphere, 
without drafts or currents of air directly on the flowers. A 
moderate amount of light without direct rays of the sun is essen- 
tial to their good keeping quahties. A thing to avoid, more 
especially, is ice in any form. Gas, either illuminating, or from a 
furnace, and sulphuric from heating pipes, are all poisonous to 
carnation blooms. 

ROOTED CUTTINGS — PACKING AND SHIPPING. 

Few have a conception of the enormous traffic there is in 
rooted carnation cuttings. The desire of every grower to secure 



ROOTED CTJTTINGS. 67 

the best kinds, and those adapted to his soil and local conditions, 
makes a continual demand for new varieties, and an exchange of 
standard sorts. Cuttings should be carefully lifted from the sand, 
flats, or turned out of pots, and massed in bunches of 25 each, 
the roots wrapped in moist moss, truthfully labeled, packed in a 
clean box corresponding in size to the number of plants to be 
shipped. Line the box with felt paper, in both warm and cold 
weather, tack the customary label for plants or cut flowers bear- 
ing the traditionary legend of ''Plants, keep from heat or cold," 
and start them on their mission. 

Healthy plants are always implied. Send such, true to name, 
or none. After long and multifarious dealings with the floral pro- 
fession, I assert that there is no class of business men more honest 
and honorable than florists, but it would be miraculous if an oc- 
cassional mercenary degenerate was not found among them. Out 
of 15 or 20 orders for new kinds of carnations sent from near home 
this spring, one was received consumed with rust. It is hard to 
conceive of more contemptible moral obliquity. On the affidavits of 
two disinterested florists to the fact, and publication in trade 
journals, the offender should be quarantined from business rela- 
tions with fair dealing men, until his nature has been recomposed 
by some reformatory machine, none of which has yet been pat- 
ented. 

Scientists have ceased their search for life, and they confine 
themselves to studying its normal and abnormal phenomena. In 
all the practical phases of the carnation's life there is not one more 
profoundly secret, and vaguely nebulous, than the life-related 
causes of the /r^^z^zV;?/ and ^^<?/m^ qualities of its flowers. Their 
duration ranges from a few hours to 30 days, when environed 
with condition, not noticably different. 

Messrs. Dorner and Crabb think the substance of petals and 
their duration are co-related; Mr. Witterstaetter adds proper hand- 
ling as a panacea; Mr. Kasting says their keeping depends on the 
time the flowers are picked after they are blown; Mr. Bauer says 
a flower on a stem cut from the plant with a sharp knife will last 
twice as long as one pinched or broken off; Mr. May says he 



68 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

never saw a carnation flower fumigated the night before it was 
cut, ship or keep well; Rob't Craig thinks "substance" of the 
petal a hard thing to define, and flowers that possessed the alleged 
"substance" to his knowledge have quickly "gone to sleep;" Mr. 
Hill thought some ingredient is lacking in the soil when flowers 
fade quickly; Mr. Kasting says he has had much experience in 
handling carnation flowers and if they are cut at the proper time, 
and kept in the proper temperature, there would be no trouble 
about them "going to sleep;" Mr. Herr thought there was as much 
art in picking carnation flowers as there was in growing them; 
Mr. Baur objects to the word "'pickhig'' instead of cutting; Mr. 
Murchie thinks pollenization is a large factor in the early wilt- 
ing of carnation's blooms; Mr. Crabb thinks sulphur and other 
chemicals put in bundles of tobacco stems to preserve them, when 
burned in the house, had much to do with the flowers withering; 
Mr. Ward was disposed to blame the express companies; Mr. 
Fisher said the "Adams Express Co. controlled New England 
territory." 

The above is an abridged interchanging of views that took 
place between these eminent carnation savants at Buffalo. There 
is a sub-vestige of philosophy in all the suggestions excepting the 
one of "Adams Express Co. controlling the territory of New 
England." 

There are no caprices in nature. Things are called versa- 
tile and erratic from ignorance of the line of causes that produced 
them. There may be a conspiracy of causes in producing a 
marvel, as in the freakish and fantastical duration of carnation 
blooms. A flower grown in great heat and moisture would not 
keep long in reversed conditions. Flowers subject to tobacco fumes 
long, and strong enough to strangle to death Greenflies, must 
throw the life of a supersensitive and feebly organized petal into 
articulo mortis. After feritilization, the petals of flowers having 
served their purpose, immediately wither, and there is a period in 
a flower's life between a plastic petal and its decay in which its 
texture is the strongest to endure. A factor controlling the most 
causes of a carnation flower's duration is ignorance ot the phys- 



CARNATION "PROSPKRITy ." 69 

iological fact, that the petals exhale carbonic gas, but not oxygen. 
Their functions are the reverse of the foliage of the plant. Vital 
chemistry says, petals inhale and exhale the same elements from 
the atmosphere as the human lungs. 

It is not a strained inference, that a healthful atmosphere lor 
the lungs of a man would be proper for both cut and uncut car- 
nation blooms; in fact experience demonstrates it to be so. 



PROSPERITY, 

This carnation originated with Dailledouze P.ros., Flatbush, N. Y., and 
was disseminated in iqoi. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

IS PRODUCTIVENESS OF BIvOOM DIMINISHING ?— IS QUANTITY 

BEING SACRIFICED FOR QUALITY ?— BLOOMS PER PLANT 

-SOME RECORDS QUOTED -COMPARISONS. 

THE data to reach a conclusion as to the diminishing product- 
iveness of bloom on later introduced varieties of carna- 
tions is such as to justify only a very general conclusion. 
The number of flowers a carnation plant will produce through the 
season is an interesting enquiry, as well as the basis of a computa- 
tion of profit or loss in its cultivation. 

This is information requires time and labor to secure. Some 
growers have kept tab on the number of flowers they have ob- 
tained for a month or two, or part of the season, which is not 
available data for a generalization. In 1890, Mr. R. W. Winter- 
staetter, a reliable and painstaking carnation grower, gave exact 
figures of the number of flowers and cuttings taken from four 
standard varieties of carnations grown at that date by him, reach- 
ing from October 17 to June 27, embracing their entire blooming 
life, which was published in an earlier edition of Amkrican Car- 
]SATiON Culture. 



No. Plants. 


Kind. 


Flowers Cut. 


Cuttings. 


Average. 


600 


WMUiam Swayne. 
Silver Spray. 
Buttercup. 
Tidal Wave. 


15447 

8456 

I 1909 

12897 

48709 


2300 
2200 
4300 
3150 


28 
26 
22 
21 


2032 




1 1950 


22 



The general average of flowers per plant is twenty four. It is 
conservatively estimated that every cutting sacrifices one flower; 
if it was so counted, it would raise the general average of flowers 
for each plant to thirty. 



BLOOMS PER PLANT. 



71 



The Chicago Carnation Co. , as published in a trade journal 
recently, has carefully counted the flowers cut from eight standard 
varieties of carnations grown in 1900, ten years later than Mr. 
Winterstaetter's figures. The company makes no mention of any 
cuttings being taken. The report runs from October 8 to June i, 
embracing the whole flowering season of the plants, of the follow- 
ing varieties: 



No Plants. 


Name of Plants. 


No. of Flowers. 


Average. 


3439 


Victor. 


77193 


21 


3355 


Gold Nugget. 


22902 


13 


1575 


Flora Hill. 


27875 


17 


1859 


Evelina. 


44512 


31 


1020 


Mrs. Joost. 


3876 


31 


2949 


Armazindy. 


49000 


17 


843 


Argyle. 


12000 


14 


3876 


Jubilee. 


48000 


13 


1 89 1 6 


8 Varieties. 


285358 


15 



The general average of flowers per plant is fifteen. The 
The number of cuttings taken from these plants, if any, should be 
added to the number of flowers, which would increase the percent- 
age per plant. The Chicago Carnation Co.'s flowers, doubtless, 
were of a higher grade and were grown on advanced carnation 
plants, and commanded a higher price than tho.se harvested by 
Mr. Winterstaetter, ten years previous. The tables enforce the 
fact that the marvelous florescence of the earlier type ot carnations 
is rapidly vanishing before the tireless strain for a better quality. 

That quality of carnation bloom is sacrificing quantity is 
strikingly emphasized in ten years' time. In the third edition of 
American Carnation Culture, R. W.Witterstaetter accurately 
counted the flower crop for the season on Silver Spray, William 
Swayne and Tidal Wave, three standard varieties, and they 
averaged respectively, thirty-one blooms and five cuttings per 
plant, twenty-six blooms and seven cuttings per plant, twenty- 
seven blooms and seven cuttings per plant. 



72 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

B. T. Lombard has said he cut from Hector, flowers and cut- 
tings, equaling eighty-four flowers per plant. 

W. R. Shelmire has said his flowers and cuttings equaled 
fifty-four flowers per plant. 

W. Nicholson estimated eighty-three flowers per plant. 

J. C. Hoag, eighty blooms per plant. 

Joseph Renard, fifty -five flowers per plant for half the season. 

H. K. Chitty, fifty-six flowers per plant, not estimating cut- 
tings. 

DeWitt Bros., five flowers per plant for one month. 

B. W. Orr said: "I have just counted (Feb. lo, 1890) seventy- 
five buds and blooms on one plant of Tenderess. Last winter, one 
plant had on it at the same time, one hundred and twenty-five 
buds and blooms." 

E. Swayne said: "I cut one hundred and ninety flowers from 
Aurora during the season of 1890-91." 

The evidences may not be very pointed and conclusive that 
the florescence of carnations is diminishing, the strong inference 
of the fact rests in the known natural law that the increased size 
of flower will decrease the number of blooms. 

The size of carnation flowers has been increased in diam- 
eter in the last twenty-five years from two to four inches. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

CLASSIFICATION OF CARNATIONS BASED ON COLORS -RATIO 
OF CARNATION COLORS -EUROPEAN NOMENCLATURE- 
COLORS A CHEMICO-VITAL PROCESS SENTIMENT 
OF COLORS. 

ASIDE from the prismatic colors, violet, indigo, blue, green, 
orange, yellow and red, and a few common well under- 
stood shades, all is chaos in the science of chromatics. 
The method of conveying information of a color to a second per- 
son is to compare it with the color of some object with which he 
is supposed to be familiar. There are seventy-five different sub- 
stances enumerated to illustrate as many shades of yellow, as 
orange, saffron, chrome, lemon, etc. Carnation means flesh colored. 
The color of the flower when it was thus christened was doubt- 
less pink and suggested the name; the compass of the term ranges 
in Caucasian flesh from a pallid white to deep crimson. The term 
by usage has become generic, and implies flower, plant and species. 

The seven primary colors are resolvable into yellow, red and 
blue. All other shades arise from the interminal ratio of admixing 
these colors. Black is the negation of all color, and white a com- 
pound of all the primary colors. 

Twenty-six letters form more than two hundred and fifty 
thousand words; seven primary perfumes all the fragrances of earth; 
red, yellow and blue are the basic pigments of the planet, the color 
mordants of the world; with these Nature decorates the hills and 
dales of earth, springs a seven-hued arch across the sky, halos 
dawns with the tints of morning, and sunsets with the dyes of ap- 
proaching night. 

The classification of carnations founded on the color of their 
flowers was given to the public by the author in the first edition 
of American Carnation Cui<ture, and has been accepted by 



74 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

florists and the public as concise and descriptive. The system ar- 
ranged the colors of all carnation flowers into seven classes, which 
are white, scarlet, crimson, pink, yellow, yellow- variegated and 
white-variegated. Nineteen-twentieths of all the leading colors 
pass naturally under these seven classified heads. 

A shaded carnation is one of these leading colors toned or 
modified by another. 

A ^^/^^^ carnation has irregular blotches of a different color 
impressed on one of the above colors. 

A penciled carnation has straight parallel lines of different 
lengths impressed on the petals bearing a predominance of one of 
the above colors. 

I have never seen a carnation flower with diversified colors 
but they were impressed upon a ground color in which white or 
yellow largely predominated, these being the base on which all 
variegations are painted. 

Buttercup is a typical yellow- variegated carnation. It has 
vermilion pencilings on a yellow ground. Chester Pride is a fine 
sample of a white-variegated carnation with carmine stripes on a 
pure white ground. Pink, scarlet and crimson are intensified 
shades of the same color. The white class ranges from absolute 
purity to a tinge of cream or pink. The yellow from deep orange 
to light lemon. The pink from a cherry red to the slightest blush. 

The demand for white carnation flowers equals those of all 
other colors. In hardy pinks, the variegations are always across 
the petals; in carnations they are parallel with the axis. The yel- 
low colored carnations are the slowest to develop into a satisfactory 
class. They are more capricious, or susceptible to uncongenial 
conditions than the other colors. It can be said there is not a 
satisfactory yellow in cultivation. Many growers use a yellow- 
variegated kind as a substitute for a pure yellow. 

The American system of color nomenclature is preferable to 
the one in Europe, which divides the strains of colors intobizzars, 
selfs, fancies and flakes. 

The cause of diversity of colors in carnation flowers can 
never be scientifically demonstrated. Selection of color in parents, 



EUROPEAN NOMENCLiATURE. 75 

in cross- fertilization revolts at man's knowledge of hereditary 
forces. Atavism is a scientific fact. Parentalism leaps genera- 
tions, and then renews its features with enforced effect. There are 
lapses into barbarism in men wearing stripes in penitentiaries 
whose ancestors wore the solid colors of civilization. 

Some delicate and interesting experiments have recently 
been made in Germany to determine what color in flowers is. 
It is found to be a substance called Flowerblue, mixed with a red 
colored element, and pervades the juices of the plant. When the 
Flower blue is treated with chemicals, various hues are artifi- 
cially obtained . Copperas turns white hydrangias to pink, roses 
to a lilac hue; and muriatic acid turns pink carnations to a cop- 
per red. The color of the yellovs carnation is found to depend 
on yellow iridescent granules inside of transparent cell walls, and 
differs in this respect from the causes of colors in other flowers. 

To describe a carnation as merely variegated, as is often done, 
leaves the mind in mental darkness as to colors ; while to use the 
pre-nomen 7£/^z/<?- variegated, or yellow -V2ir\eg2ited indicates the 
dominating shade and conveys some intelligence. 

Repeated experiments have been made to test the compara- 
tive keeping qualities of the seven classified carnation colors. 
They have resulted in awarding the palm, for greatest durability, 
to the crimson color. 

If the German physiologists are right, the yellow colored car- 
nation, with its different habits, marked eccentricities, and means 
of colorization, it is entitled to rank as a distinct species. It is not 
colored by the alchemy of its juices, but mechanically, like a dia- 
mond that steals a sunbeam and hides it in its heart to sparkle for- 
ever from countless facits, the yellow carnation imprisons an iri- 
descent atom in translucent cells to reflect its golden hues. 

It can be asserted with scientific assurance, that the coloring 
of the petals of flowers is a chemico-vital process, in which Nature 
outrivals Raphael in toning dazzling frescoes. No use is known 
for petals but that of a gonfalon to guide insects to a bacchanal of 
nectar. They are painted with pencils made of sunbeams, and pig- 
ments mixed with Hfe. The petals are soft, watery and delicately 



76 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTrRE. 

organized, they exhale carbonic acid gas but not oxygen, they 
circulate a sap touched with delicate chemicals that by the thauma- 
turgy of sunlight turns to charming colors, shades, tints and tones. 
The green color of the foliage of carnation plants depends up- 
on minute green globules called chloj^ophyl w\i\c\\ float in the sap of 
the epidermal cells. They also rely on sunlight for their emerald 
hue. A plant grown in the dark is without a green color. Shades 
of carnation foliage differ in varieties from a steel blue to a glau- 
cous green. 

The experimental station of the state of Connecticut has an- 
alyzed the petals of carnations and find they are composed of three 
elements. 

Nitrogen 33 per cent. 

Phosphorus 8 " ** 

Potash 59 ** " 

This fact goes far to show the food on which petals feed. 

Carnation is a word of Latin derivation. It comes from caro, 
meaning flesh, or flesh colored. It was first used to indicated the 
color of the carnation flower, but has become so generalized as to 
imply a genus of the Dianthus tribe of plants, varieties, and 
any color flower the plant may bear. I have no historical 
data to indicate the time this term was applied to any branch 
of the Dianthus genus. It is now used to distinguish the 
perpetual flowering kind from the single crop blooming pinks. 
Out of thirty-six varieties of the remontant type introduced this 
year (1901), the pink color predominates over any other color. 
Out of nearly one thousand named carnations that have originated, 
and been imported into the carnation zone of America during 
the last forty years, so far as history has preserved, their colors 
have been as follows : 



Pink of different shades, 


25 
18 

15 
14 
15 
II 
2 


per ( 


ocariei 

Crimson *' 

White 

Yellow-variegated shades, 

White 

Yellow 





COLORS A CHEMICO-VITAL I*RO0ESS. 



77 



This does not include twelve varieties of carnations with a 
greater or less purple tinge to their petals. 

The purple class consists of: 

Roy des Violet, Flushing, Lady Rachel, 

Pupura, Fleta Fay Foster, Bonibell, 

Purple Crown, Purple Beauty, Villisco, 

Kazer William, Purple King, Lowell. 

None of these have taken positions of much importance. 
Four of the twelve were imported. 

There has been originated and imported twenty-five solid yel- 
low carnations, running a scale of shades from a pale lemon to 
deep orange. 



Yellow Queen, 
Yellow Jack, 
Star Light, 
Old Gold, 
M. E. Gobet, 
Henrietta Sargent, 
Germania, 
Golden Triumph, 
Golden Gate, 
Gold Coin, 
Gold Nugget, 
Eliza Furgurson, 



Field of Gold, 

Cora Collins, 

Cloth of Gold, 

Eldorado, 

J. B. Jackner, 

Pride of Penhurst, 

Sunshine, 

Venus, 

W. J. Burk, 

Andalusia, 

Ben Halliday, 

Bouton de' Or. 



At least eight of this list were imported. This class of colored 
carnations is erratic in its habits and does not reach the average 
in productiveness of bloom, but when it sorts with other colors 
the product is often robust plants, good bloomers with magnifi- 
cent yellow- variegated corollas of the Buttercup and Chester Pride 
types. Carnation plants, as a rule, are the most florescent that 
blow solid pink, scarlet and white colored flowers. Pure yellow 
flowers are borne on plants so shy and capricious that many do 
not attempt their cultivation, but use some yellow- variegated kind 
to supply this color. The color hues of carnation flowers are 



78 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

modified by natural and artificial light. The Marquis is more 
impressive by sunlight, and Croker, by gas hght. 

A learned professor of an experimental station exploiting 
plant wisdom formally stated in an address that the first car- 
nations were ''blue'' a most irrational inference in the light of 
their history. Past generations may not have been as wise as 
plant managers of modern "stations," but they never before have 
been charged with the solecism of calling black white, or uniform- 
ly naming a pink object to illustrate a blue color. 

A. Linton counted 172 buds and blooms on a California variety 
named Majesty and thinks a good specimen would yield 500 flow- 
ers during a season. A typical plant of such carnations during its 
blooming period might yield 25,000 petals; more than ten square 
feet of petaline canvass,every flower leaf textured with tri-strands of 
nitrogen, phosphorus and potash, twirled in the spinneret of nature 
wove to fabric in life's subtle loom, moistened with mordants in a 
calyx-crypt, and juggled into perfumes and witching colors by the 
magic wand of simple sunbeams. 

Nature's sweetest lyric is symboled by a flower. It is a meta- 
phor in her loftiest poetry, and emblems the divinest emotions that 
ever thrilled the heart of man. Mythology says carnations sprang 
from the blood of rival lovers, and typify disdain, but modern 
romance makes them hieroglyphs of warmer and more generous 
affections. 

Pink carnations indicates Purity. 



White 


* ' Fascination. 


Scarlet 


" Dignity. 


Crimson " 


" Ardent love. 


Yellow " 


Refusal. 


White-var." 


Friendship. 


Yellow " " 


False. 


Red 


" Acceptance. 



C.IKNATION "MRS. B. A. NELSON.' 



79 




MRS. E. A. NELSON. 

This carnation originated in Indianapolis, Ind., with E. A, Nelson. It 
has been tested for four years, which places it beyond the mutation which 
often waits on new carnations. 

The plant has a strong constitution, is a vigorous grower, and produces 
its flowers early, profusely and continuously, on strong stems from two to 
two and one-half feet long. The flower is a beautiful iridescent pink, from 
3^ to 4 inches in diameter, and possesses an absolutely unbursting calyx, 
and has remarkable keeping qualities. It has won records of 91 >^ to 
94 points from critical judges and has been the admiration at every carna- 
tion exhibition where shown. It will be on the market in the spring of 
1902. The sales represented by B. A. Nelson, Indianapolis, Ind., and S. S. 
Skidelsky, Philadelphia, Pa. 



CHAPTER XV. 

GROWING CARNATIONS UNDER GIvASS THROUGH THE SUMMER 
—WHY HIGHER GRADE FLOWERS— INCREASED COST 
— EARIvIER MARKET— ADVANCED PRICE 
—THE COMPENSATION. 

THE system of growing carnations under glass through the 
summer season is yet in its experimental stage, but is 
attracting the attention of growers near affluent markets, 
where quality commands its price. Its advocates claim an even 
cut of bloom, of higher grade through the season, with better 
stems and less disease. They admit the system requires more 
labor, expense, and closer attention, which is offset by an increased 
price for the higher quality of goods. Some indoor growers turn 
their plants out of two and one-half inch pots the first of April 
directly in the soil on the benches in the house where they are to 
remain during their blooming season. They will commence 
flowering about the first of October, thus giving a supply at a 
period when carnation flowers are scarce. 

Mr. Hartshorn grows his carnations outdoors for eight or ten 
weeks and then removes them to the house bench — a compromise 
between the two methods. 

Glass affords the plants a more uniform temperature and 
light. lyight intensifies the colors of flowers, as is observable in all 
countries with cloudless skys. Dr. Beneck, an eminent vegetable 
physiologist of Europe, says : "lyight tends to develope the repro- 
ductive over the vegetative elements of plants." This implies its 
floral features. Love is the ardor of an animal's desires; a flower 
is the heat of a plant's passion; the perpetuation of its species is its 
only object; to fructify and live again in vital seeds is a plant's 
final aim and destiny. Flowers are not aureoled with beauty for 
men to admire. They don their crowns of gaudy colors and fling 
their perfume on the ambient airs to cajole the bees to Adonean 



OEOWiNG CARNATIONS UNDER GtiASS. 81 

feasts. When a plant feels the tread of pollen-shod feet of insects 
on the dias of its petals, it swoons to coma with the delirium of 
rounded life; its end is attained, its destiny fulfilled. 

It is not strange that carnations should exploit their best 
floral efforts for the only object for which they live under the elec- 
tric stimulus of intensified sunbeams. House for growing car- 
nations through the summer under glass should be contrived for 
the greatest possible ventilation. lyight is the conjuror of better 
blooms, not heat. The side and central ventilators should remain 
constantly open until the outside temperature falls below 40 de- 
grees at night. Plants for indoor culture are struck about the 
same time as for the common system of culture and carried thrift- 
ily forward in pots, until about the first of July, in cold frames, 
when they are transplanted on the beds, or benches in the house. 
All growers now bench their field carnations from one to two 
months earlier than they did ten years ago. 

Growing carnations under glass is a matter of market. If a 
grower can realize more money for a less number of high grade 
flowers than he can for a greater number of moderate quality, he 
should experiment with the glass system. There are some vari- 
eties of the carnation family that are better adapted for growing 
under glass than others, but the practice has not yet developed 
the catalogue. Jubilee, Triumph, J. Dean are mentioned, while 
Buttercup is specifically regarded as undergoing a palingenesia 
by the thaumaturgy of summer glass. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

SUNLIGHT AND VENTILATION PRIME FACTORS IN CONSTRUCT- 
ING CARNATION HOUSES-BUTTING GLASS -HEAT- 
ING— RADIATING SURFACE REQUIRED FOR 
GLASS SURFACE. 

IT is not designed to give details relative to glass houses for forc- 
ing carnations, but to allude to a few of the main features that 
should be in houses to supply the most imperative demands of 
carnation plants. In the architectural construction, heating and 
ventilating plant houses there are firms with great experience and 
large capital who have spent their lives in perfecting these several 
departments. They must be deferred to. 

There are but three primary systems for heating green- 
houses, the brick flue, hot water, and steam methods. They are 
evolutionary. For a small glass surface, say two or three, eleven 
by forty-foot houses, with the absolute certainty that there would 
never be a demand for an increased capacity, I would use the old 
brick flue as the cheapest and the best primary school in floricul- 
ture, and equal to the means of some and the ambition of others. 
Floriculture is centralizing and capitalizing and in its larger centers 
oi trade where capacity and facilities are great for growing carna- 
tion flowers for market there would be a hazy hope of success from 
the flue system of heating. 

For a larger area of glass, hot water can be adopted with suc- 
cessful results. With a large extent of glass and a corresponding 
value of stock to be cared for, a stoker and night watchman are im- 
peratively demanded. The steam system comes to the front as the 
ultimate in greenhouse heating until Thermo-Electricity is suc- 
cessfully installed. The relative cost of hot water and steam for 
any definite quantity of glass can be more certainly obtained by 



MODERN GREENHOUSES. 



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84 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

addressing the old reliable firm of Hitchings & Co., who keep 
more fully abreast of all progress of heating, than can be given in 
this work. 

The internal arrangement of carnation houses, relative to 
benches, solid beds, overhead surface, and sub- watering has 
been exhaustively treated under these respective captions. 

I desire to speak of locations for carnation houses, and em- 
phasize sim-light and aeratio7i as prime factors in growing good 
carnations. Houses should be located and constructed to afford 
the plants the fullest extent of these beneficences. The physical 
anatomy of the carnation plant, the functions of its organs, and 
years of observation, point to the great importance of these neglect- 
ed features in houses constructed for growing carnations. 

R. W. Winterstatter's tables, relating to the flowering of car- 
nations, are the most accurate ever given to the carnation public. 
They clearly establish the productiveness of bloom; that quality 
and quantity largely depend on sunlight and ventilation. 

The marvelous mechanical devices for ventilation leave lit- 
tle to be. desired in this particular. Profuse ventilation is an as- 
cending note in the scale of successful house culture of carnations. 
Fire in the furnace and the ventilators frequently and reasonably 
raised, superficially seems a solecism, but profoundly it is phi- 
losophy, experience, health and vigor for carnation plants. 

All carnation houses should be located to secure the greatest 
amount and longest duration of sunlight through the winter 
months. It is an established physiological fact, that light power- 
fully stimulates the reproductive forces of plants (which implies 
flowering) at the expense of their vegetative or structural develop- 
ment. This is illustrated by the immense blooms on small plants 
grown under unshaded glass during summer months. 

Much importance attaches to little things in growing carna- 
tions. I^ittle things make "' quality .'' ''Quality is the cry of the 
purchasing public, ''quality has been the shibboleth of those who 
have won fortune and fame, in growing carnations. 

Butting glass in green houses with an intervening metallic 
strip was deemed the perfection of mechanical ingenuity, is now 



RADIATING AND GLASS SURFACE. 



85 



generally discarded. It is one of the misfits between theory and 
practice that often occurs. 

It may be of interest to give tables prepared by B. A. Dud- 
ley, representing a reliable heating and ventilating manufactur- 
ing company. The following will be found a safe proportion ment 
of heating surface to glass surface for various temperatures in the 
greenhouses, when the temperature is at zero outside, with not 
to exceed five pounds steam pressure at the boiler: 



TABLE I. 

PROPORTION OP HEATING TO GLASS SURFACE FOR MAIN- 
TAINING DIFFERENT TEMPERATURES IN 
GREENHOUSES. 



Temperature. 


Heating Surface 


Glass Surface. 


70 degrees. 

65 
60 

55 
50 

45 
40 


I square foot. 


5 square feet. 

6 

6^ 

7 
8 

9 



Having determined the amount of heating surface, the next 
point is its distribution, and for this nothing gives better results 
than the "over -head" and *'under-bed" system This system 
consists in carrying the flows through the peak of the house to 
the end farthest from the boiler, then dropping and returning in 
small pipes, preferably one-inch under the beds. 



AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE, 

TABLE II. 

RADIATING SURFACE REQUIRED. 



Square feet of 


Number 


of Square feet of Radiating Surface Required at 


glass exposure. 


40 degrees. 


45 degrees. 


50 degrees 


60 degrees. 


70 degrees. 


25 


2 7-9 


3 i-« 


3 4-7 


4 1-6 


5 


50 


5 5-9 


6 1-4 


7 1-7 


8 1-3 


10 


75 


8 


9 


10 


13 


15 


100 


u 


13 


14 


17 


20 


200 


23 


25 


30 


33 


40 


300 


34 


38 


43 


50 


60 


400 


45 


50 


57 


67 


80 


500 


56 


63 


72 


83 


100 


1,000 


112 


125 


143 


167 


200 


2,000 


223 


250 


286 


333 


400 


3,000 


334 


375 


429 


500 


600 


4,000 


445 


500 


571 


667 


800 


5,000 


556 


625 


714 


833 


1,000 


10,000 


1,112 


1,250 


1,429 


1,667 


2,000 


20,000 


2,223 


2,500 


2,857 


3,333 


4,000 


30,000 


3.334 


3,750 


4,286 


5,000 


6,000 


40,000 


4.445 


5,000 


5.714 


6,667 


8,000 


50,000 


5,556 


6,250 


7-H3 


8,333 


10,000 



TABLE III. 



Size of Pipe. 


'A 


a. 

4 

3-637 


I 


li 


i4 


Length of pipe per square foot ot 
radiating surface. 


4.502 
.221 


2.903 


2.301 


2.010 


Number of square feet in one lineal 
foot of pipe. 


.274 


•344 


•434 


•497 


Size of pipe. 


2 


2i 


3 


3i 


4 


Length of pipe per square foot of 
radiating surface. 


1. 611 


1.328 


1. 091 


•955 


.849 


Number of square feet ::\ cne lineal 
foot of pipe. 


.62 [ 


.752 


.916 


1.044 


I 178 



CONSTRUCTING CARNATION HOUSES. 87 

Amounts of surface necessary to heat a given amount of g^lass be- 
ing figured on the basis that the house is well built, tight, and 
moderately protected from the prevailing winds. Under these 
circumstances, it will be found fairly accurate. 

The ideal glass house for growing carnations for commercial 
purposes has not yet been built. Growing carnations under glass 
through the summer and the removal of them from the field to 
the benches so much earlier than formerly and long before the 
hot season, in this latitude, being past, makes the old style green- 
house ill adapted to the changed system of cultivation. They 
confine suffocating hot air, which natural forces would rapidly 
equalize with outdoor conditions if given a chance in their 
construction. Under bench, and side ventilation amounts to 
but little in a tier of a dozen houses. Front and rear access of air 
is not esteemed as it should be, and at best is insufiicient in long 
houses. The air must be kept in rapid motion, with the adjuncts 
of moisture and shade, to maintain a healthy temperature for 
carnations. I know of a grower that takes out a row of glass 
along the heel of the rafters during summer with noticeable bene- 
fit to his plants. 

There is a field open for cheap and practical improvements in 
greenhouse structures in adapting them the better for growing 
carnations under glass in either summer or winter weather. 

The Dale Estate greenhouses at Brampton, Ontario, are 840 
feet long and 8 in number. They are supported by a trussed 
roof, contain tile beds raised 16 inches from the ground The 
Massachusetts experimental station, after conclusive trials, says 
that all plants make better growth with the heating pipes under the 
benches. The under bench system of heating consumes less fuel. 
Water leaving the boilers, at 120 degrees Fahr., will maintain a 
temperature in the same house, 6 degrees higher, with the pipes 
under the benches, as against the overhead system of heating. 



AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 




EGYPT. 

This carnation originated with Weber & Sons, Oakland, Md., and 
was disseminated in 1901. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

FERTILIZERS FOR CARNATIONS— FORMUIvAS— EFFECT OF 

CARNATION NUTRIENTS— EXACT EIvEMENTS IN A GIVEN 

QUAIvlTY OF CARNATION STEMS, ROOTS AND 

LEAVES. 

EXCESS of assimilated nutriment unbalances the vegetative 
and reproductive forces in both animals and plants. A fat 
animal looses its desire to cohabit, and its power to con- 
ceive. A potato will yield no tubers on a dung hill, nor will a 
rapidly growing tree produce any fruit. An abnormally robust 
carnation plant will produce no flowers. When nature extrava- 
gantly expends on one side, it economizes on the other. A 
blossom is the heat of a plant's passion, as love is the ardor of an 
animal's desire. The number of flowers that a plant will yield 
is in the inverse ratio to its abnormal foliage. A carnation plant 
whose vegetative force has over-balanced its reproductive 
energies, cannot be equalized during its brief existence. It maj^ be 
fed up, but never dieted down. It is a disease, a destruction of 
the equilibrium between the assimilating and excretory forces of 
the organism. 

The drift is toward chemical combinations for fertilizing car- 
nations; but I think the uncompounded nutriments, such as 
gound bone, lime, wood ashes, cow and sheep manure, are safer 
and better. Nature would not have constructed a laboratory of 
vital synthetical chemistry in the penetralia of a plant system if 
it had designed man to operate its nutrient pharmacy. 

Soil favorable to the growth of the primal Dianthus family 
contained but little humus, and all vestiges of ancestry in plants 
or animals are never completely obliterated in their progeny. A 
carnation grower asks through a recent trade journal, "What is 
the matter with my carnation plants? I made the bench soil out of 



90 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

half rotted manure, fertilize once a week with manure water. They 
are robust and vigorous plants, but won't give much bloom, and 
what few they do afford are small and indifferent." The Carna- 
tion Editor without elucidating the law of vegetable life, replied. 
"They will all come right." Healthy equalization of life forces 
will not occur in their brief existence. The questioner can cart 
his carnation brush to the compost pile in June without enough 
flowers to pay him for the heat and humus he has used. 

A carnation should be started on plain food. It can be fed up 
to physical excellence, and grand flowers. There is no reliable 
anti-fat remedy known. A fat animal is comparatively barren. 
A fat, or over-fed carnation plant is equally so of flowers. They 
are but an incident in the process of fecundity. 

Formerly soils were analyzed, and the food for plants in- 
ferred. Now plants are analyzed and their food requirements 
supplied. To know what elements a plant is composed of is to 
know the nutriments it needs. A reliable analysis of a definite 
quantity of normal carnations, embracing roots, stems and leaves, 
by Martin Smith, shows they are composed of 73.4 per cent water, 
26.6 per cent dry matter, which was resolved into 

Silica 4.63 

Iron and Alumina 21.33 

Carbonate of Lime 22.61 

Magnesia 2.18 

Potash 29.16 

Soda 2.88 

Sulphuric Acid 3.16 

Phosphoric Acid 12.56 

Carbonic Acid Chlorine etc. . 1.49 

100.00 
This analysis is significant and conclusive in showing the 
mineral elements needed in the chemical fertilizers, and vindi- 
cates the experiments of fertilizers made by the Massachussetts 
station on carnations under glass. Out of thirteen different com- 
pounds, the one containing Sulphate of Potash with Sulphate of 
Ammonia gave the best results as to vigor of the plants and the 



FERTILIZERS FOR CARNATIONS 91 

productiveness of bloom; and out of six tests of single fertilizers 
Nitrate of Potash gave the best results. Need theory, experience, 
and philosophy, on fertilizers for carnation seek any more con- 
clusive information ? 

The consensus of opinion today is, that partially decayed 
manure is positively injurious to carnation plants, and no matter 
how well rotted, it does not contain all the elements of food that 
carnations need for their highest development. 

There is a growing trend towards the use of chemical car- 
nation nutriments. The chemical and physiological knowledge 
now possessed of plants, points to phosphoric acid, potash, and 
nitrogen, as the three prime elements in plant growth, and all 
fertilizers should possess one or more of these elements in some 
form. 

Prof. Weyman's great fertilizing formula contains all the 
mineral elements of carnation food. 

Phosphate of ammonia 2 oz. 

Nitrate of Soda if oz. 

Sulphate of ammonia if oz. 

Water 50 gal. 

Mix and use a light application to the soil every ten days. 
A very successful carnation grower for a top dressing on his 
carnation benches, uses 

Screened stable manure 4 bushels. 

Ground bone % peck. 

Wood ashes Y^ bushel. 

Slacked lime ^ peck. 

Ground bone and the potash in wood ashes are always in 
order. Sheep manure is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus. 
Ground bone and well rotted manure is one of the best fertilizers 
for carnations, both in the field and on the benches. 

The following formulas possess, theoretically, the best carna- 
tion food, while for efficiency they have been practically tested: 

Nitrate of Soda 31 lbs. 

Sulphate of Ammonia 13 lbs. 

Phosphoric Acid 130 lbs. 

Sulphate of Potash 26 lbs. 



92 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

Thoroughly mix, and dissolve one pound in sixteen gallons 
of water and use two gallons to a square yard of bench surface 
every two weeks. 

Mulching carnation beds is esteemed by some as a valuable 
mode of fertilizing the soil. Well rotted, finely sifted manure 
makes a good mulch. 

All liquid food as a stimulus for plants should be used weak 
and often, rather than strong and infrequently. Since the intro- 
duction of carnations there is no record of showers of quails and 
manna, or liquid phosphate and nitrogen. A successful grower 
uses the following fertilizing formula: 

Sheep manure i peck. 

Nitrate of Soda 2 quarts. 

Cow manure 3 pecks. 

Water 50 gallons. 

Mix and apply on the benches moderately every two weeks. 

The physiology of a carnation plant is to send its feeding 
rootlets toward the surface for its supply of nourishment. The 
carnation grower that mulches with sheep, cow or well rotted 
stable manure, and judiciously uses on the surface fine ground 
bone, and Prof. Weyman's fertilizing formula, can depend upon 
acting in harmony with the plant's nature, and in furnishing it 
with the most healthful and essential food nutrients. 

Growers are given to puting too highly enriched soil in the 
start on the benches, avoiding this error, there is epitomized in 
this chapter the essence of all that is known, or will be known, 
relative to carnation fertilization. But the last word has never 
yet been said on any subject; nature enjoins "Finis" being 
written in any volume of her unfolding scriptures. 

Dianthus Superba, that has been evolved, requires more 
moisture and humus and less mineral elements for nutriment, 
than Dianthus Semperflorens. 



CARNATIONS ^'SWAYNE AND LAMBORN. 




SWAYNE AND LAM BORN. 

Originated by Edward Swayne, Kennett Square, Pa. Disseminated in 1888. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

DISEASES OF CARNATIONS CAUSED BY INSECTS— GREENFLY 

{Rliopalosiphum Dianthi) — VJET> SPIDER {Tetranychics 

7>/rtrzV^^)— NEMATODE {Heterodera Radicicola)— 

THRIPS— REMEDIES. 

CARNATIONS in the United States are freer from all kinds 
of diseases than they were five years ago. The epidemic 
of Rust that occurred in the early nineties threatened the 
continued cultivation of carnations, and frightened growers into 
radical precautionary measures to secure the health for their 
plants, in all the phases of their life, between the cutting bench 
and the compost pile. There is no disease of carnations the grow- 
er now need fear, if he starts with healthy cuttings and follows 
them through their mutations with the best known hygienic con- 
ditions. 

Growers must abandon the idea that their duties consist in 
mixing villanous compounds for carnation ailments, and making 
their greenhouses hospitals for diseased ones, or sanitariums for 
their recovery. The prophylactic method is the only one on which 
to grow carnations. The pharmacy must be preventive, not cura- 
tive; and their nutrients normal and not concocted. It is enough to 
give carnations vital paresis to carry the ponderous names pro- 
fessors from experimental stations give to their real and imagi- 
nary malidies. 

To the common mind the Etiology, Pathology and Thera- 
puetics of carnation diseases are as nebulous as was Heckel's 
chaotic ether, out of which he moulded worlds. 

GREENFLY {Rhopalosipimm Dia7ithi.) 

All the serious troubles which assail carnations arrange them- 
selves under the heads of i7isect and fungous enemies. Of these 
the Greenfly is the sapper and miner and leads the enemies, as- 



THE GREENFIiY. 95 

saults on the citidel of the carnation's life. Professor Theodore 
Woods, of the United States Agricultural Department says : 

*' There is not a plant or tree, wild or cultivated, that escapes 
the ravages of this pest, and of all the beings that rack under the 
head of injurious insects there is not one capable of causing more 
distruction than the Greenfly." 

Both the primary and secondary effect of the piercings of an 
Aphid makes it the carnation's greatest enemy, its powers of mul- 
tiplication are so enormously rapid, that, abetted by the I^ocust and 
San Jose scale, if they were not restrained by destructive enemies 
of their own, would soon denude the world of vegetation. I^ike 
the barbarians from the northern hive that overran and destroyed 
Roman civilization in the fifth century, the Aphides feed upon 
everything that floats the plasm of vegetable life. Entomologists 
say its most delectable menu is the rich blood of the Dianthus 
genus of plants. 

This insect is too well known to 
need any description. It multiplies by 
agamic reproduction. Little cells, or 
nodes develop on the inner walls of 
the parent's abdomen, which are rapid- 
ly detached, and in a few hours are de- 
livered by its parent as live Aphides. 
Reraeur estimates that one Aphid may 
be the progenitor of 6,000,000 lineal 
descendants in a single season. They 
breathe through openings in their An Aphid, highly magnified, 
sides. Some of their offspring have wings so they may more easily 
scatter their countless numbers. Their mode of continuing their 
species is an exact duplication of continuing carnations by cuttings. 
It is recommended to the consideration of advocates of the rurining- 
out theory. Long years of agamic life has entailed no degeneracy 
on the Greenfly. It is as virile today as when its first parent thrust 
its proboscis into the protoplasm of a dianthus leaf. The voracity 
of the Greenfly is only equaled by its prodigous geometrical powers 
of multiplication They feed like vampires on the vegetable 




96 AMEBICAN CARNATION CULTTJRE. 

blood of plants; their organisms are minature sugar refineries, con- 
verting great quantities of elaborated life sustaining elements in 
the vital sap into what is called "honey dew" on which termites, 
or ants, greedily subsist. lyike the fabled filthy Harpies, sent by 
Juno to destroy the tables of Pheneas, the lances of these green- 
coated myrids are tipped with poison, and a train of devastating 
evils follow in their wake. They deposite a virus in the plasm of 
the leaf fatal to life, and the cells collapse and die. They open 
lesions on stems and leaves in which the leprosy of Rust germi- 
nates its spores. 

Professor Woods has been unable to inoculate a healthy 
carnation leaf with the Fungi of Rust, the leaf must first have its 
epidermis lesioned, or perforated by puncturing pests. (The first 
part of the next chapter makes consecutive reading with this.) 

RKMEDY. 

spraying water with force will knock many Aphides from 
their lodgments on affected plants, but the older ones soon regain 
their feeding grounds. The fumes of tobacco are a specific for 
Greenflies. This is so cheap, effective and easily applied, it is use- 
less to seek other remedies. The tobacco smoke can only be ap- 
plied in an enclosure capable of confining the smoke for a time 
for respiration by the insects. The narcotic principle in tobacco, 
so poisonous to Aphides, is called nicotine. Tobacco stems are 
chiefly obtained in bales from tobacco factories at little cost, to 
possess their full Aphides toxin they must be fresh, and should 
be dampened before being burned in the greenhouses, this causes 
them to give out a slower, denser and cooler volume of smoke. 
Every carnation house should be fumigated once a week with 
tobacco, without any reference to an observable appearance of the 
Greenfly. A bushel of tobacco stems is sufficient for a large 
house if used as a preventive. Nicotine is a specific for Aphides, 
Red Spider and Thrips. Flowers should always be picked before 
the house is fumigated; they keep better and the odor of tobacco 
is dissipated before they are ready to be re-picked. 



THE RED StlDER. 97 

The United States department of Agriculture has experi- 
mented with fifteen remedies for Greenfly, and the most effective 
one is resin, dissolved in caustic soda. Its effect is said to be mark- 
ed and immediate. The active principle of tobacco is offered in 
commerce under the name oi nicotine and used as a spray by dis- 
solving half a pint in three gallons of water. Resin, dissolved in 
carbon oil, is recommended. Tobacco stems, steeped in water un- 
til it is the color of coffee, and apply ed as a spray is effective. A 
teaspoonful of pyrethum, dissolved in two gallons of water, used 
as a spray, will also exterminate the Greenfly. 

The formula for fumigating with hydrocyanic acid gas, is 
ninety-eight per cent cyanide of potash, one half ounce, one ounce 
of sulphuric acid, and three ounces of water for every 1500 cubic 
feet of house space. The fumes should continue through the 
night. This is one of the most powerful and deadly poisons known 
to pharmacy and should be used with the greatest care. 

RED SPIDER {Tetrafiychus Telarius.') 

The entomological history of this insect is yet to be written. 
The broods hatch from eggs, and their rate of multiplication is 
considered equal to that of the Greenfly. It spins a delicate webb 
over the leaves, and subsists on the vital juices of the plant. A 
dry atmosphere and fire heat favors the reproduction of this pest. 
It is not confined alone to greenhouses, but the vegetable world is 
its habitat, and the juices of most species of plants, its food. 

REMIJDIES. 

Syringing with water has but a temporary effect. Maintain- 
ing an atmosphere in the house of seventy-five degrees of hygro- 
metric moisture is not inimicable to the health of plants and is 
fatal to the Red Spider. Spraying with two ounces of Ivory soap 
in two gallons of water will bring the Red Spider under control. 

Another remedy: Take four pounds of Chloride of Sodium 
(common salt) , to fifty gallons of water and use as a fine spray 
is alleged to be an effective remedy. 



^8 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

THRIPS. 

These pests have wings and six legs, are quick and active, 
making short flights, giving the appearance of hopping. They 
attack carnations in the field, and are carried into the houses with 
the plants. Thrips work their way through the calyxes when 
carnations are developing their buds, feed on the tender petals, 
and lay their eggs on the inner side and upper end of the calyx 
valves. In these crypts they are largely immunes from fumes 
and sprays. There are but few localities in the states where Thrips 




Appearance of shoot affected by carnation Thrip or Twitter. 

are troublesome. They are a hard enemy to combat, being en- 
cased in the tissue of the plants, tobacco fumes so feebly nar- 
cotize Thrips that they mostly recover from the stupor. They are 
most common with plants grown in sandy soil. 

RKMEDY. 

Caustic Potash i lb. 

Fish Oil 3 pts. 

Soft water 2 gals . 

Dissolve the potash in water, add the water, boil and stir for 
half an hour, use when cold as a spray. This is considered the 



HOOI? NEMATODE. 99 

most effective remedy known, for Thrips, Greenfly and Red 
Spider; but there will be some so secreted they cannot be reached 
without successive applications. 

ROOT NEMATODE {Hiterodefa Radidcola.) 

This disease was first noticed in 1885. Symptoms are a 
browning and shriveling of the plant's tissues, usually on one 
side, from below upward, involving finally the death of the whole 
plant. On the medium size roots may be found galls, about an 
eighth of an inch in diameter, and these little galls, or nodules, 
contain the eggs of the Nematode, which hatch into worms, that 
migrate to fresh roots and repeat generation. Prof. Atkinson at 
first described the pathology of this disease. Fortunately it is not 
YQxy common, and is most likely to occur in soil taken from un- 
der trees, or near hedges. 

REMEDY. 

The only remedy suggested is sterilizing the soil before it is 
put on the benches, by steam heat, to a point that would destroy 
all germs of this life. 

U0f6 



CHAPTER XIX. 

DISEASES OF CARNATIONS FROM FUNGI, RUST {Uromyces Caryo- 

phyllinus)--W^T STEM ROT {Rhizoctonia)-Jy^Y STEM ROT 

{Fusarium)—SVOT DISEASE [Septoria Dianthi) — 

FAIRY RING {Heterosporium Echinulatum.) 

—REMEDIES. 

THIS destructive disease appeared as an epidemic in 1892, it 
seems now to be under control from the use of fungicides, 
and better sanitary conditions in carnation houses. The 
presence of Rust can be detected by spots on the leaves and stems, 
looking like little blisters, under which there is a fine snuff- 
colored dust. The covering of this dark powder is a semi-pellucid 
layer of the plant's epidermis. When it is broken a cloud of spores 
is released to scatter the infection, when the blister does not yield 
this dark powder it is not Rust. However fatal fungicides may 
be to active or dormant spores, it is difficult to reach those shield- 
ed by a layer of skin on the plant's leaves. 

CARNATION RUST i^Uromyces Caryophyllinus.^ 

Prof. A. Woods, chief of the division of vegetable physiology, 
U. S. department of agriculture, in a formal address takes a 
radically new ground on the causes of bacterial diseases of carna 
tions. He says the old name "Bacteriosis" for that class of car- 
nation diseases should be dropped as inappropriate, and ' 'Stigmo- 
nose" or "punctured disease" substituted; that the bacteria found 
on carnations are the results of the poisonous punctures of the 
Greenfly, Red Spider, and Thrips. Prof. Woods supports his 
pathological theory with cogent facts and illustrations. Suppura- 
tion in a wound is caused by bacteria and is obviated by sterilized 
and germicidal dressings. It is reasonable that the ever present 
spores of Rust would find lodgment and germinate in wounds of 



CARNATION BUST. 101 

a plant's tissues, in which case they cannot be considered the 
primary cause, but a resulting aggravation. 

"Stigmonose" is the combination of two Greek words mean- 
ing a disease resulting from stinging or piercing. Prof. Woods 
originated the word and revolutionized the etiology and path- 
ology of the "Rust" disease. Prof Woods and Dr. Bissy both 
have ineffectually tried to inoculate a healthy matured carnation 
leaf with Rust spores; and they had not the power to penetrate 
the waxy bloom on the epidermis of the foliage. They must 
find a lodgment in a lesion or puncture to multiply their million 
spores. Prof. Halstead of Rutters College, N. J., thinks the spores 
of Rust find lodgment and vegetate in the stoma, or breathing 
pores of the leaves of carnations. 

It is asserted with microscopic assurance that the gos- 
samer filaments of Rust roots penetrate every part of the plant's 
structure, even to their roots, and thus assail the vigor of the 
plant's constitution, and continue the leprosy in its cuttings. If 
the ruinous effect of the Rust were confined to the local spots 
where the blisters appear, it would be robbed of its terrors. But 
its roots permeate the entire organism of the plant. It feeds as 
voraciously on the vital essence of the plant as its spores are 
countless in their numbers. Rust sends out its thread-like roots 
into every ward of the plant's system, to feed on the sugar and 
vital pabulum that the plant elaborates to keep alive its vital fire of 
life, and the plant declines and dies in the merciless grasp of the 
root-tenticles of this insidious vegetable Octopus. Prof. Woods 
asserts Rust spores vegetate in lesions of the plant's leaves, I 
maintain it is in the plants and cuttings by division of its roots. A 
carnation plant constitutionally effected with this terrible parasite 
can never be cured. 

Dropping the continuity of the gossamer roots of this Fungi 
through the structure of the plant's organism and accepting the 
stage of its development referred to by Prof. Dana, in which seg- 
ments of these penetrating radicals are seen with a microscope, 
floating in the plasm of the principal cells of the plant, make 
it easy to conceive how closely this fungus is associated with the 



102 



AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 



plant's life. Life lives in cells, cells are the primal units of life. 
A cutting consists of thousands associated cells. A carnation cut- 
ting, apparently healthy, taken from a Rust diseased plant, will 
develop the disease in the cutting bench, which can only be 
done by transmission of the malady to the progeny by root germs. 

This theory of the etiology, and pathology of the Rust 
Disease, is supported by facts and unravels many paradoxes and 
solves riddles of the sphinx. It explains why cuttings are at- 
tacked with Rust in the propagating bench. Why a variety 
exempt one season is affected the next; why measures against it 
must be prophylactic and not remedial; why some plants seems to 
be immunes to Rust when their close neighbors are badly affected; 
why promising new varieties as Blanch, Edna Craig, Jacque- 
minot, Uncle John, and others, having contracted Rust constitu- 
tion, transmitted them and were soon dropped from the roster of 
commercial varieties. 

The importance of Bacteria lies in their insignificance. Their 
strength is in their weakness, their devastation in their unseen 
methods. The aggregation of atomic forces works amazing 
results; the coral insect builds rock-based islands in the ocean. 

The following formulas as preventative therapeutics for Rust 
are invaluable and should never be neglected. Some are said to be 
specifics for Rust in the initiative and local phase of its progress. 




Hie:. I- 
Leaf of Carnation, with several ru.st pustules. 



Prophylactic treatment is the only cure for Rust, but it can 
be held in check by the use of various fungicides. 

REMEDIES. 

Mr. Dorner's formula has proven effective for pustules. It is 
as follows: 



REMEDIES. lOS 

Sulphate of copper i lb. 

Ammonia 2 qts. 

Soft Water 6 qts. 

To one pint of this mixture add two quarts of Ammonia, 
stirred in a barrel of water and the plants should be well syringed 
every two weeks on a clear day. 

The following formulas have been experimented with, giving 
substantially the same beneficial results: 

The liquid Bordeaux mixture consists of 

Copper Sulphate 6 lbs. 

Quick lyime 5 lbs. 

Water 22 gals. 

Chloride Copper 3 oz. 

Water 22 gals. 

Sulphide of Potassium 2 oz. 

Water 22 gals. 

Arsenical formula for Rust: 

Arsenous Acid 616 grains. 

Carbonate of Potash .... .1236 ounces. 
Water 5 ounces. 

Heat to make the solution. One ounce to a gallon of water, 
used as a spray. It is asserted this will not only check but 
exterminate Rust. 

Mr. C. W. Ward's treatment is prophylactic and effective, I 
quote his own language: 

Dipping. — All young plants are immersed in the liquid 
Bordeaux mixture when set in the open ground. All mature 
plants are immersed (tops only, not the roots) in the same mix- 
ture when benched in. 

Spraying. — All young plants are sprayed with either the 
liquid Bordeaux or ammonia solution once in two weeks while 
under glass, and all field plants are sprayed the same in field. 

FosTiTE — Under glass all plant houses are blown full of 
Fostite in a fine cloud, every dark, cloudy day. 



104 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

Dry Bordeaux is sprinkled over all paths and under all 
benches every two months. 

Carnation plants should not be syringed ' .' any trace of Rust 
or Spot is about the premises. All diseased plants should be 
promptly burned. 

By the above means we have not had a trace of rust on our 
stock." 

FAIRY RINGS {^Heterospormm Echinulaticm.) 
This is a trouble easily controlled by using a half-pound of 
carbolic acid diluted, and used as a spray. 

FUNGUS IN THE CUTTING BENCH. 
This variety of Fungus is believed to be identical with the 
one causing wet stem rot (yRhi2octo?iia) , the conditions being 
similar for its development in both instances, a close atmosphere, 
moisture, heat and decaying vegetable elements in the bench-sand 
is the cause of Rhizoctonia in the cutting bench. 

REMEDY. 

Use sand, free from all impurities, renew it once a year, 
white- wash the bottom and sides of the bench with fresh slacked 
lime before it is filled with sand, and there will be no trouble 
from this fungus. 

WET STEM ROT {Rhisodonia.) 
This disease affects carnations in the field and on the benches, 
and sometimes is very destructive. It is characterized by a moist 
condition of the skin on the stem of the plant. If it is twisted, the 
bark or skin will be found dead and disconnected with the sub- 
tissue. It is most likely to occur on plants of a soft growth, in 
hot weather, deficient light, wet spongy soil, that contains much 
decaying organic matter, poor drainage and imperfect circulation 
of air. Prof. Woods says it is caused by a fungus that may be de- 
tected by the unassisted eye, and is favored by acid soils, excess 
of heat, moisture and manure. lyime will reduce its frequency. 



WET STEM ROT. 105 

The Geneva experimental station has discovered it on thirty 
species of cultivated plants. It causes leaf rot in lettuce and is 
the fungus of the cutting bench. It is propagated through the 
soil and not the air. 

RKMEDY. 

Reverse abnormal conditions with cultural methods. Lime 
as a remedy is indicated by Mr. Scott, who is an extensive carna- 
tion grower, in a soil strongly impregnated with lime, and reports 
substantially no stem rot. Mr. May, an observing cuUivator of 
carnations, says he lost seventy- five per cent of his plants with 
stem rot, but after giving his soil fifty bushels of lime to the acre, 
has grown carnations on the same land without any stem rot 
trouble. This fungus spreads slowly through the soil, but never 
through the air. It luxuriates in moist decaying vegetable matter 
and attacks the stems and roots of carnations and other plants. 

SPOT DISEASE {Septoria Dianthi) 
This disease was first noticed in 1889. It is recognized by 
roundish spots on the leaves and stems of the plant, has a pale 
yellowish color on the margin of the healthy tissue around 
which is a tinge of purple or red. The spots are easily dis- 
tinguished from either side of the leaf, there are numerous black 
dots scattered over the pale area, which gives the name to the 
disease. 

REMEDY. 

Make a strong tea of Coculus Indicus, also a tea equally as 
strong of Quassa, a half-pound of carbolic acid. To each half pint 
of above add ten grains of corrosive sublimate. Use one table- 
spoonful to one gallon of water, as a spray. 

DRY STEM ROT {^Fusatimn.') 
This is another disease of the stem of the carnation plant, 
but not so general as the other. It is caused by a fungus that de- 
velops in the capilliary vessels of the stem, causing it to become 
dead, dry, hard and stringy. Prof. Woods says this fungus 
thrives in a reverse condition of the soil favorable for the "Wet 



106 



AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 



Stem Rot," and flourishes best in soil with an alkaline reaction, 
and is a close relation of the fungus that is driving the cotton 
industry out of North and South Carolina, 

REMEDY. 

None is definitely known. The fungus is in the soil. It is 
possible to sterilize the soil on benches with steam, but it is not 
practical in the field. 




Courtesy of T. R. Piersou Co. 

MRS. THOMAS W. LAWSON. 

The alleged I30.000 Carnation, showing the Silver Cups awarded it. 



CHAPTER XX. 

NUTRIENT DISEASES— INCIDENTAIv PESTS- COHERING PETALS 
—BARREN CARNATIONS— PURPLE JOINT (i?^5^^^^)— RUP- 
TURED CALYXES— DOUBLE FLOWERING CARNATIONS. 

NATURE and sethetics revolt at a ruptured calyx. Their 
sweetest lyric is a perfect flower. The unfoldment ot 
carnations has been along lines of least resistance. It is 
easier for vital force to multiply and broaden petals, than to in- 
crease the capacity of the calyx to accomodate them. Double 
flowers are abnormal, and it is not strange the process by which 
they are reached from the single flowering state should be marked 
by inharmony of structural development, the law of co-relation 
being broken in its evolutionary march between the petal sand the 
calyx. 

The petals of a carnation flower contain different elements, on 
analysis, from any other part of the plant. They inhale oxygen 
and exhale carbonic acid gas, reversing the function of the foliage. 
The calyx is composed of slow growing and strong fibers, feebly 
connected with each other, and easily torn apart, while the petqls 
are soft, vascular, and grow rapidly; the sun paints the plant green 
with chlorophyll, and the petals with a paradise of colors. It is 
reasonable a hiatus should occur between the natural and artificial, 
the calyx and petals, where difference in structures, functions and 
momentums of life meet. A bursting carnation can never be 
cured. Mrs. Carnegie, one of the best white-variegated varieties, 
was an immune to all remedies, lived with this disease and died 
with its terrors. 

Bursting is aggravated by sudden changes of temperature and 
imperfect ventilation. The calyx is strengthened by air and light, 
given to buds on well supported stems. Heat also lengthens the 
claws of the petals and lifts their breadth farther out of the mouth 
of the calyx. Nature and selection, in cross-fertilization, is co-ordi- 



108 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

nating the calyx and petal differences. The time is coming when a 
bursted carnation will be regarded as anomalous. Ten out of the 
thirty-six new carnations of 1901, the originators assert, never 
burst their calyxes. 

From a strictly botanical point of view the double flowering 
carnation is itself a nutrient disease. It is the product of domesti- 
cation, enforced selection, high culture and stimulating fertiliza- 
tion. This is what has doubled its corolla, metamorphosed its 
stamins into petals, aborted its organs of generation, and largely 
barrened it of the powers of reproduction. Some varieties of 
carnations have only sexual vestiges, others have stamins and no 
stigma, others stigma and no stamins. Yet it is a disease the 
world adores. Like immortality, if untrue, is still a sweet delusive 
dream that men hug fondly to their hearts. 

BARREN CARNATIONS. 
Very robust and vigorous growing carnations will sometimes 
refuse to bloom, or what few flowers they do afford are small and 
indifferent. Such carnations are diseased, there is a loss of equi- 
librium between their absorbing and exhaling forces, the vegeta- 
tive activies of the plants have extinguished their reproductive 
natures, a fat animal has little desire, and less ability to repro- 
duce itself. Its life forces are concerned in manufacturing fat 
which supplants the inclination to procreate. Carnation plants that 
loose this equipoise have always fat or overgrown vegetative 
organs and functions, and are comparatively worthless, the coun- 
terpoise equilibrium cannot be re-established during their short 
lives. It is caused by the continued use of rich stimulating 
nutrients. 

COHERING PETALS. 

Some varieties of carnations, at times, exude a sticky sub- 
stance in their buds which causes the petals to adhere to each 
other, the bud to become deformed, and the flower worthless. 

This is caused by deranged nutritive functions of the plant, 
from some unhealthy food element in the soil. Some ascribe the 
cause to extremes of heat between day and night temperatures, 



DISEASES OF CARNATIONS. 109 

but the true pathology ot cohering petals is an excess of stimu- 
lating nutrients given the plants. 

PURPLE JOINTS {Rosette.^ 

It is distinguished by a purple rosette, or coloring around the 
joints. Neither the pathology or remedies for this trouble are 
well understood. It is thought to be caused by overhead water- 
ing, and the retention of water at the axil of the leaf, and de- 
rainging local nutrient forces of the plant, if this is the case, the 
remedy suggests itself. Fortunately the disease is very rare in 
this country. 

I have described all the diseases carnations are subject to in 
America, in a brief and simple way, so any one with a $1.50 
pocket microscope can determine for himself the nature of the 
trouble with his plants. I have given the most reliable remedies, 
and the most effective insecticide, germicide and fungicide formu- 
las known to the carnation growing profession. 

There are other incidental or trancient pests which assail the 
carnation crop, such as Ants ( Termites flavips) , Rose leaf Tyer 
{^Cacoecia rosaceand) , Cabbage Looper {Plusia brassicae) , Varie- 
gated cut worm {Peridroma sancia). The Ants rendezvous in 
decaying wood about the house; especialy favorable encampments 
are worm-eaten locust posts. 

But these assailants are causal or fortuitous, and the good 
judgment of every carnation grower will suggest an efl&cient 
remedy. 

MICE. 

Mice at times do great damage by cutting and feeding on car- 
nation plants on the benches. 

REMEDY. 

Keeping a cat in the houses and traps on the benches will 
soon exterminate them. 

GERMS IN BENCH SOIL. 
Soil for carnation benches taken from under trees, or near 
hedges contains germs, pupas, grubs and worms. The soil should 
be sterilized by heat before being used. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

DO VARIETIES OF CARNATIONS DETERIORATE AND DIE?— 

CONTINUING LIFE BY CUTTINGS -A NATURAL AND 

VIRILE METHOD -AS PRESERVATIVE AS BY SEED 

—OFTEN THE PROCESS INVIGORATES 

WEAK SEEDLINGS 

EVERY variety of carnation has a distinct character of its 
own. Ignorance of its requirement extinguishes varieties, 
by not supplying their unvoiced necessities. The advocates 
of the "Running Out" theory start with the assumption that the 
life of every animal, tree and plant is bounded by infancy and 
old age. This is true of individual organisms, but in no sense 
applies to the life of varieties or species — men die, but the people 
live forever. A carnation is a biennial plant, two years being the 
duration of its life. We know the species has persisted over two 
thousand years, it has renewed its life a thousand times and is 
virile today as when Theophrastus picked up the little pendant in 
the land of Leonadas and exclaimed in admiration, '' Dio-ajithiis !" 
It has been continued by seed. A cutting continues life in a new 
organism, with new cells and fresh pabulum, as much so as if it 
originated from a seed. Weakness attaches to both, more to 
plants germinated from seeds than from cuttings. There is 
more hereditary degeneracy enfolded in a seed; not one-fourth of 
carnation seedlings have enough vigor to survive, the rest are en- 
ervated, or lapse toward monopetalism, while nearly all cuttings 
produce robust plants. Propagating by cuttings is a natural pro- 
cess for continuing life. It is simply the segmeyitary method nature 
adopts in many plants that are the most tenacious of life, and in 
the agamic process in the Zoophyte order of animals. A tomato 
plant from a cutting will produce thirty per cent more fruit than 
from a seed. Nature never inaugurated a law of decadence tor 



'^SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST." Ill 

her creations, but has written "virility" over the gateway of every 
avenue of life. Propagating by cuttings is not devitalizing, but 
still varieties are extinguished. The interest in new varieties 
works neglect in old ones, hereditary weakness and insidious 
disease follows in their wake and correspondingly in their merits. 

Their is no biological law known, why any variety of healthy 
carnations might not live forever under persistent sanitary reg- 
ulations, and be as immortal as the fabled Phenix bird that lives 
singly, but burns itself at stated times on a pyre of spices to rise 
again from the ashes rejuvenated and persistent. 

W. R. Shelmire, a critical and observing grower, thinks 
propagating by cuttings invigorates the constitution of varieties 
and in support of the assertion instances Buttercup, Swayne, 
I^amborn, Century, Tidal Wave, and other varieties that had 
more robust constitutions when they were supplanted by better 
kinds than when they were first introduced. 

A secret and mysterious fatality has waited on many new 
and promising carnations. There is a recurrence of some occult 
hereditary weakness that makes them the prey of bacteriosis, or 
some other disease. Kdna Craig began life most auspiciously. It 
was disseminated with a blare of trumpets, but was struck 
with an enfeebling palsy and sank into a soon -forgotten grave. 
This was the case with "Uncle John," "Stuart," and a score 
of others that possessed great expectation It is said the good die 
young. 

When new and better kinds of carnations are introduced, no 
one is censurable for neglecting old ones; it is the unconscious 
execution of Nature's law of the ''Survival of the fittest.'" Life 
lives in cells. They are the units of life in a cutting as in a seed. 
Both are divorced from the parent plant and bide by nature to con- 
tinue destiny. The only difference science sees between a cut- 
ting and a seed, one continues existing life, the other starts a new 
one, and age is more robust and virile than infancy. 

Buttercup is the product of the first humble parents of 
Alegatiere's new species of carnations imported to America. It 
has renewed its life near a third of a century by cuttings since 



112 'AMERICAN CARNATIOlSr CUIiTURI). 

Charles Starr stood dumb and dizzy before the illuminated letter 
his tactful fingers had evolved in the "Alphabet of Angels." It 
is as robust and vigorous today as when nature's Raphael glori- 
fied its corolla with witching colors, painted on the petals, in the 
morning of its natal bloom. Mythology says, but one immortal- 
ity was granted the twins, Polux and Castor, so they lived and 
died alternately. Science mocks at the myth that Buttercup is 
given an immortality that is denied the rest of its species. 




TYPE OF CARNATION WITH INDENTED PETALS. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

LIFE LIVES IN CELLS— CONCEPTION IS BY FISSION OF CELLS 

—ORIGIN OF BUD VARIATIONS OR "SPORTS"— 

BISEXUAL LIFE IN CARNATIONS— IN ALL 

THE MONCECIAN CLASS OF PLANTS. 

LIFE lives in microscopic cells, a cell is the unit of life. A 
cell enfolds a vital spark. The structure of an elephant 
or an aphid, is an association of cells, and their lives and 
physic force is the concerted energy of aggregate cell life. Every 
vegetable and animal organism is vitalized matter, built out of 
physic animates. There is no spontaneity in life. Life has never 
occured on this ball of dirt without antecedent life since the Cre- 
ative Fiat first spoke it into a cell of quivering protoplastic jelly. 
In the lower order of vegetable existences life is continued by 
''segtegatiofi'' a segment of the plant separates from the aggregate 
and lives. Animals much higher than the Zoophyte class con- 
tinue their species on the same principle and are devoid of genera- 
tive organs. The execrated greenfly, at whose shrine florists 
weekly pours the incense of tobacco fumes to propitiate its ab- 
sence, multiplies its millions by little protuberances on the inner 
walls of its abdomen, which rapidly detach themselves and are 
hatched as living flies. In ascending the Moncscian order of 
plants, the male and female organs of generation are joined in the 
same flower and it requires the male pollen to fertilize the seed. 
The male and female forces exist in the same plant, and their re- 
spective organs are known as stamins and pistils. 

In the DicBcian class of plants the sexes are separated and 
live in trees and plants springing from different and their own 
roots. One plant possesses only stamins the male organ of genera- 
tion and pollen the male fertilizing dust; another plant possesses 
only the pistils the female organ of generation with a gummy 
stigma to receive and retain the male dust. 



114 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

The carnation belongs to the "Moncecian" class of plants. 
Male and female cells exist and are associated in the same plant, 
and circulate in its common blood. The fact of distinct male and 
female organs in the flower of the same plant proves that bisex- 
ual cells conjointly exist as distinct entities in the same plant's or- 
ganism. Otherwise it could not fertilize its own seed. If bisexual 
cells do not jointly and harmoniously circulate in the plasm of a 
carnation plant it could not vitilize its own seed, and both the 
stamens or pistils in its flowers are useless organs. Carnations 
blow what botanists call "a perfect flower," meaning a flower 
capable of fructifying itself and continuing its species independent- 
ly. Conclusions are so palpable that male and female cells flow in 
the blood of a carnation plant and polarize their forces in the stamens 
and pistils during the period of fecundation, that they are the 
synonyms of facts. 

The importance of this physiological fact consists in its being 
denied, and in its acceptance being the basis of the only rational 
theory of bud variations that can ever be adduced. 

ORIGIN OF BUD VARIATION. 

New life comes from the conjugation of vital forces of male 
and female cells in the ovary of the plant. Necessarily there is 
some confusion in a plant's circulation at the axis of a leaf about 
to break into a bud, the walls of bisexual cells are ruptured and 
they mix and mingle with life as it breaks into a bud which gives 
this lateral branch a different character from the parent plant. The 
color of the flower and habit of the branch are as unlike the parent 
plant from which it grew as if it had been fertilized in the ovary by 
the ordinary method of poUenization. This strange new branch is 
called a ''sporf or ''bud va7^iatio7i.'' The difference between a sport 
and a seedling is bisexual cells by accident mixed and mingled in 
the germ of a bud, instead of an embryonic germ in the ovary. 
Chester Pride, Edelweiss, H. Stanley, Starlight, Armazindy, Ore- 
gon, and more than twenty-five other sports have been named, 
disseminated and wore even honors with seedlings. Sports never 
occur in plants that bear exclusively )?iale or female flowers, be- 



BISEXUAL LIFE IN CARNATIONS. 115 

cause their sap circulates only unisexual cells, and bud variations 
cannot happen unless their is a vital union of diverse sexual cells 
to work the variation. Strains of plants are produced by high 
cultural methods, but varieties are the product of sexual forces in 
the secret crypt of conception. 

Sports carry into their constitution tonic and atonic hereditary 
forces, the same as seedlings. Some are weaker than the parent 
plant, others stronger, as is Chicago, a sport of Mrs. Bradt. It has 
a more robust constitution and impressive color than its mother 
plant. Artificial manipulation has caused carnations to produce 
more offsprings by this abnormal method than any other class of 
plants. 

Carnations are largely rendered sterile by cross-fertilization 
and cultural methods, and carried farther from their normal line 
of hfe than any other class of plants. Nature's most heroic effort 
is to continue life when it is threatened with extinction. Culture 
and selection has largely aborted the stamens and pistils in car- 
nations, destroyed or atrophied these organs of generation, elimi- 
nated seed and their power to continue their species. Their ex- 
istence is threatened, their life is in peril; in three years there 
would not be a remontant carnation in existence if all art was 
withdrawn from them. 

Nature feeling the terrors of impending extinction provides 
other avenues for continuing existence and substitutes them for 
the ones art has closed. She makes the type easily continued by 
cuttings, and varieties common by the fission of sexual cells in the 
germ of a new branch at the nodes of the plant. The banana 
was once a seeding plant; evolution changed it to a seedless one. 
It now carries in its fleshy fruit only vestiges of aborted seeds by 
which it once was propagated. For the abolished method nature 
substitutes offsets as the means for its continuance. 

Horticulture abolished seed for perpetuating the potato, then 
Nature placed the germs for persisting its life in the structure of 
its tubers. As art aborts the fecundity of carnations, nature 
supplies the defects. 



116 AMERICAN CARNATION CTJIiTURE. 

"Sports" are growing more common every year. They are 
not freaks, but one of Nature's reserved methods for continuing 
species when its existence is threatened. There is no more mys- 
tery in new life by bud variation than from a seed: both are 
riddles of the sphynx at which the world will ever wonder. 

The engraving of the American Flag carnation is a good il- 
lustration of a "Sport.." It was a bud variation of scarlet Portia. 
It originated with Mr. Bergman of New Jersey, and was dissemi- 
nated by the late Peter Henderson, in 1891. It was the most 
evenly and distinctly marked red and white carnation ever on the 
market. It also illustrates atavism, or suspended heredity, in its 
parent Portia and that some of its ancestors were white and par- 
tially renewed their features in the carnation American Flag. 

The muddy water of the Missouri river flows for miles un- 
mingled with the crystal tide of the Mississippi; in the plasm of 
Portia flowed unmixed sexual cells, each dowered with pigments of 
red and white. At the axil of a leaf and at the birth of a bud 
(which is only a modified birth of a new life) there happened a 
rupture and mingling of the contents of bisexual cells and a new 
life mixed and mingled with a birth of new bud. The color of 
flowers and the life of a plant are things apart. The American 
Flag and all variegated varieties of carnations show in the Jission 
of bisexual cells that there is not a fusiori of parential colors. 

Different sex-cells are the legatees of diverse colors, yet they 
ebb and flow in harmony in the plasmic current of a carnation's 
life. The parent cells of the American Flag settled {oict of court) 
in the birth of a new bud on an equal division of petaline pigments. 

The engraving of American Flag was sent to the author by 
the late Peter Henderson to illustrate a former edition of Ameri- 
can Carnation Culture, and is esteemed as a memento of the 
friendship of a noble man. 




AMERICAN FLAG. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

GEOGRAPHICAL BOTANY OF THE COMMERICAL DIANTHUS 

—PLANTS ARE EASILY MODIFIED BY CONDITIONS— 

—SLIGHT CLIMATIC DIFFERENCES IN ADJOINING 

COUNTRIES HAVE ENGENDERED NEW SPECIES. 

NATURAL, adaptation by selection developed the five-petaled 
pink of Greece into the polypetalous Dianthus of Eu- 
rope, a biennial, bearing the second season only one brief 
but profuse crop of bloom. Alegatiere in 1848, by artificial polen- 
ization, a possibility science had just brought to light, selected two 
varieties, if not species, crossed fertilized them and obtained 
a product with a tendency to scatter its bloom through its entire 
life, instead of bunching it as its parents did in a brief multitu- 
dinous crop. From this habit Alegatiere's new variety or species 
has been called the Remontant Carnation, because it continually 
remounted itself with flowers. It is also called the Semperflorens 
carnation, semper meaning constantly; florens, flowers— constantly 
flowering. It is called carnation, meaning flesh, or flesh colored. 
There can be no doubt that the carnation had a pink color when 
thus christened. 

Alegatiere's new variety, or improved strain, has diffused itself 
wherever men love and cultivate flowers. They have differentiated 
and modified their habits and flowers to meet different climatic 
conditions. 



THE DIANTHUS IN GERMANY. 

Eufurt and Quidenburg are the storm centers of the Dianthus 
family of plants in Germany. Seedlings are germinated in frames, 
under glass; when two or three inches high, they are transplanted 
to the open field, in rows two feet apart and one foot between the 
plants, where they will bloom the second season. They are lifted 



THE DIANTHUS IN FRANCE. 119 

for market into five and six-inch pots from the field, neatly trim- 
med and staked, and will throw a remarkable profusion and 
wealth of bloom. The strains of the varieties grown by the plants- 
men are divided in bizzars, flakes, selfs and fancies. The most pop- 
ular colors are crimson and scarlet with countless varying shades. 
Special or choice varieties are invariably continued by layering 
the lower branches of the plants in the field or in the pots. 



THE DIANTHUS IN FRANCE. 

In France, carnation cuttings are struck early in the fall in 
cold frames, where they remain through the winter and are trans- 
planted in the open ground early in the spring, where they bloom 
profusely through the summer. Scarcely one of the hundreds of 
kinds catalogued in France is recommended for winter blooming. 
The demand for Dianthus flowers in France is through the sum- 
mer and fall months, and in the winter and spring in America. 
The period of demand for flowers helps to fix the type or habits of 
the plant. They would naturally be bred to meet requirements. 
There is still another divergent cultivated in France and England 
called the Malmaison. This variety of Dianthus bears unusually 
large and showy flowers, the finest specimens measuring six 
inches in diameter and commands a great price. But few of the 
semperflorens type are grown in England as its muggy winters 
seem fatal to their success. There is a section of Dianthus 
called Border Pinks popular in some parts of England and are 
abundant and attractive bloomers. 

The prominence and importance given to the forcing type of 
carnations in England can be fairly gauged by the new "English 
Carnation Manual," in which, out of seventeen chapters devoted to 
special types of carnations, but t/iree are allotted to the perpetual 
blooming kind, which absorbs all interest in America. 



THE DIANTHUS NORTH AND SOUTH. 
To show how quickly isotherms, or the annual average of 
heat units affect the nature of carnations, I quote a declaration of 
Mr. Dale, a competent and comprehensive florist of Canada, just on 



120 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

the northern line, yet within the carnation belt, in saying: "they 
cannot produce as high grade carnation flowers in Canada as 'in 
the states.' " An experienced and practical floriculturist of St. 
Louis, just on the souther7i limit of their normal zone, says carna- 
tions do not flourish here Another correspondent from Louisville, 
Ky., says: "Carnation plants do not succeed here; the summer 
heat injures the plants and s^ops their growth." Another writes 
from Birmingham, Ala., "Carnation flowers are esteemed here. 
We import the plants in the fall from their habitat, as we do 
Spirea and Bulbs, flower them under glass during the winter sea- 
son, then throw^ them out." 

THE DIANTHUS IN CALIFORNIA. 

A grower in California writes: "We root our cuttings in sand 
without artificial heat, plant them out in the yards and lawns in 
January, if in the field, in rows three feet apart and two feet dis- 
tant from each other. Plants will bloom in six months and fre- 
quently attain a diameter of three feet. A good specimen will 
blow five hundred blossoms in a season and will continue to bloom 
until new cuttings begin to flower. We never lift them. They will 
live several years and are used to decorate lawns; their flowers have 
but little commercial value. They grow best and burst their ca- 
lyxes most in our wet season, which corresponds to your winter 
and bloom and perfect their flowers best in our summer or &ry 
season. Seedlings are treated the same as cuttings; the latter are 
only used to perpetuate some choice varieties." 

Another correspondent writes from San Francisco: "Seivers & 
Co. are raising fine carnations under glass. Their best variety is 
Hanna-Hobart, bearing three and a half to four-inch flowers." 
(Jumbo Hanna has not made her majestic ejitree 5^et in the sem- 
perflorens belt.) "John O'Hara is building a house to be filled 
this fall with Lawson. Crane does not give satisfaction here." 

Lawson may maintain its missionary character in California 
as an exhibition plant, as its originator informs a correspondent 
through a trade journal that it needs a fifty-five night tempera- 
ture to keep its calyx from committing /<?/(? de se. 



THE DIANTHrS IN CALIFORNIA. 121 

The normal belt of the forcing carnation leaves all of Cali- 
fornia to the south, but this marvelous spot of earth has a com- 
posite climate of all the zones, with its snow^-capped mountains 
bathed in blue, its foot-hills in perfumed Junes, and the languorous 
air of its sea-levels kissed and cooled by the ocean's waves, gives 
it a flora mixed and marvelous. 

The essential nature of a carnation can never be modified by 
cuttings. This is done when bisexual cells meet in the socket of 
the ovule. California carnations are a divergence by generations 
of life begetments, modified in the act by the sorcery of climate. 
Mons. Dalmias' "Atim" of I^yons, was the Adam of all the car- 
nations in America, the chemistry of their plasm has been re- 
composited in the alembic of life by the thaumaturgy of environ- 
ments. They have conformed to nature's resistless law of the 
survival of the fittest to live, to meet diverse conditions. 

There have been ninety named kinds of carnations introduced 
from California into the forcing belt; most of them in 1892-3-4 
and a fevv of them catalogued the second season. They all doubt- 
less possessed the latent qualities of being forced, and of perpetual 
bloom, but required the climate jugglery of fecundation to de- 
velop them. Eighty named carnations have been introduced 
from Europe since the puritan La Puritie landed from its 
Mayflower. Bouton de' Or was the last imported by Ziengerbel. 
It was grown in this country privately for years, then put on the 
market by the Dailledouze Bros, and discarded. 

E. Sievers & Co. are growing carnations under glass in Cali- 
fornia which may tend to redevelop the qualities desired in 
the carnation belt proper. They have introduced Ethel Crocker 
with much success and this year California Gold appears. Miss 
Louise Faber and Purity are named as introductions from the 
same state. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

CARNATIONS THE PRODUCT OF ADAPTATION BY SELECTION— 
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST— ORIGIN OF VARIETIES- 
BASIS OF SPECIES— FOUNDATION OF GENERA- 
ESSENCE OF ORDERS. 

THE law of adaptation by selection may not be comprehend- 
ed; it is the process by which carnations have become 
what they are. Mr. Rudd has stated that he obtained 
seventy- two carnation seeds from one pod, three times the average 
number. If Mr, Rudd would sow these seeds, and they all germi- 
nated and grew to their blossoming stage, when he would critical- 
ly review the lot and destroy all that were weak, sickly, single- 
flowered, off colored, short stemmed, bursted calyxes and procum- 
bent habits, and repeat this operation a number of times during 
several years until but one was left that approached his ideal of 
what a carnation should be; then repeat this process on the seed of 
this sole seedling for forty years, this would be artifically adapt- 
ing the carnation to his ideal and wants, by selection. 

It is estimated by cross-fertilizers that not one seedling in a 
thousand is worthy even of a name. That one is the originator's 
darling, he magnifies its merits and minimizes its faults; it is 
again subjected to the growers, the elective court of last resort. 
It merges all sentiment and flies the pirate's flag of sordid com- 
mercialism, bearing the merciless motto of ''How much nioney is 
there in it'' This is the final verdict on all questions in life, issued 
daily, by the mercinary parliament of the world's religion. 

In 1895 there were six hundred listed carnations in America. 
Parties organized in the interests of carnations sent one thousand 
circnlars to carnation growers asking them to vote for or aga'nist 
the merits of each carnation they grew, or knew, and return the 



SUKVIVAJL OF THE FITTEST. 123 

ballot to headquarters. But nine of the list received a majority 

vote. These were: 

Buttercup, Portia, Hellen Keller, 

Daybreak, I^izzie McGowen, Bdna Craig, 

Grace Wilder, Tidal Wave, Sweetbrier. 

These were the princes and princesses of the royal blood of 
the dynasty of Dio anthos that ruled the world of flowers in 
1895. They were the elective product of half a million seedlings, 
and the strenuous labor of hundreds of men with tactful fingers 
for twenty years to enthrone beauty on the mountain's top, where 
flora with flowers teaches worldlings the idiom of angels. 

Every carnation that reaches general fame passes through 
a crucial ordeal and runs a gauntlet of criticism to which no other 
flower is subjected. Aristocracy in cross -fertilization cuts no 
figure in its final make up. Silver flagons, gold medals and 
special premiums of any peregrinating society, mutually admiring 
each other's products, count for naught on the synthesis of a grand 
carnation nor settle the toga it will wear. 

Nature "adapts by selection" by a similar method, but to a 
difierent end. The persistence of the species is its pivotal purpose, 
the hills and dales are its beds and benches, the clouds its fonts of 
water, the sun its ceaseless thermal source and the deep blue bend- 
ing sky its glorious dome of glass. A thousand carnation seeds are 
scattered by the winds on congenial soil, they germinate and grow, 
a long drouth occurs and the weakest die, a protracted wet ensues 
and another lot sickens and succumbs. A protracted freeze hap- 
pens and the tender ones fall, the weeds choke them, and all but a 
few of the strongest abandon the struggle for life; vicissitudes of one 
kind and another assail them until but one is left that is the "sur- 
vival of the fittest," and the strongest to perpetuate itself. It sows 
its seed and they are again subjected to the same selective process 
for generations, and thus the clove-scented species of carnation be- 
came established on the shores of the Mediterranean. This is 
nature's method of ''adaptation by selection'' and originating 
Species, while heredity slowly follows and fixes their permanency.- 



124 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE 

Heredity and evolution are two forces in Nature. One is pro- 
phetic; the other, reminiscent. One seeks to return to primitive 
types, the other seeks to advance old standards. One yearns for 
flesh pots; the other, for the promised land. 

This simple law accounts for all the capricious habits and 
modified forms of vegetation in the world. Every species of plants 
has bands, belts, zones or isothermal lines along which they 
reach their highest evolvement. If they are moved out of their 
climatic home they sport into different types adapted by climatic 
selection. Plants as they migrate toward the poles become an- 
nuals; toward the equator, perennials. The Nasturtion is an an- 
nual vine in the temperate zone; a perennial shrub at the equator. 
No carnation acclimatized in England, Germany or California 
ever was, nor can be, immediately successful in the remontant car- 
nation zone in the states. 

Heredity is less strenuously impressed on embryonic life. 
Henzie's White was from imported seed, as were many other ex- 
cellent varieties. A carnation seed fertilized in Eufurt, if its an- 
cestors possessed the forcing and perpetual blooming features of 
the Alegatiere type, germinated and grown in Chicago, would 
strongly incline to the type of carnations grown there. A Eap- 
lander's child, born and bred in Boston, would imbibe the habits of 
the "Hub" and "benevolently assimilate" with the decendants of 
Miles Standish and Paul Reviere. Adaptation starts with new 
life, in the crypt of conception, and not through a line of cuttings, 
which is the continuance of old life. After fifteen generations of 
life by cuttings, Henzie's White sulkily left the field to better 
kinds, the same robust, hardy, late blooming carnation as when it 
started on its conquering career. 

Buttercup, the oldest carnation in cultivation, is today the 
same proud, capricious, Cleopatrian queen, bewitching with its 
dawn-lit beauty a world of Anthonys, as when it leaped from the 
tactful fingers of Charles vStarr, thirty years ago. Its amazing 
health and vigorous constitution is a defiant denial that propaga- 
ting by cuttings is devitalizing and an imperious assertion of the 
fact^that ^varieties die only from the poison of neglect. Bouton d' 



6ARNA*iON "CENTURY/ 



i25 



Or was imported by Denny Zingerbel, and after years of cultiva- 
tion in this country by cuttings, was put on the market by an in- 
fluential firm to meet the fate of all foreign kinds, unnaturalized by 
the process of home fructification. 




OENTURV. 

Originated by Chas. Starr, Avondale, Pa. Disseminated in 1886. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE IvIMiT ZONE OF THE SEMPERFI.ORENS CARNATION- 
ISOTHERMAL LINES— CLIMATIC CONDITIONS— EVERY TYPE 
OF SPECIES CONFINED TO ITS ISOTHERM -THE CAR- 
NATION'S IS FIFTY DEGREES MEAN HEAT. 

AN isotherm is a band or belt of the earth's surface, across a 
continent, along which a definite number of heat units are 
evolved during the year, which gives the belt a certain an- 
nual average temperature. Isotherms are not strait, regular lines. 
Their courses are changed by large bodies of water, ranges of 
mountains, and elevations of land above sea levels. On the volcano 
of Teneriffe there are five successive different zones of heat, each 
producing a different class of vegetation. An elevation of i,ooo 
feet above sea level equals one degree north latitude. Every iso- 
therm on earth has its own Flora and Fauna, its modified men and 
plants. Soil, sunlight, heat and moisture, are the prime features 
in climate and factors of life. An isotherm is the composite of 
these elements. No law in geographical botany is better deter- 
mined than that a mean annual heat is required by each species of 
plants for their full development, and that they will tolerate but a 
slight variation in the number of yearly heat units without modi- 
fying their nature to conform to conditions which accompany a 
less or greater number. 

It is surprising to how narrow a belt of specific annual heat 
some species of plants confine themselves. The cotton plant will 
submit to but 3 degrees of a variation. The sugar cane requires 
83 degrees of heat to mature and will submit to but 5 degrees of a 
change. It is not temporary fluctuations of temperature that af- 
fect the fate of plants, but it is the number of heat units in the 
definite time that rounds their lives into fruition. Some species 
are more cosmopolitan in their nature, and their lives are normal 
in broader zones. 



ISOTHERMAL LINES. 127 

The growing zone in the United States for the remontant 
type of carnations lies between 37 degrees and 43 degrees north 
latitude. The isotherm indicated on the map has a mean an- 
nual temperature of 50 degrees. It is the equator of the empire 
of Dianthus Semperflorens, the meridian of its home and health, 
its profits and prophecies. It is the only belt of land on earth in 
which Alegatiere's cross-fertilized product has developed into a 
carnation that will unfold its petals to an Arctic sun and fling its 
perfume on the winds of winter. Latitudes and longitudes are 
imaginary lines on the earth's surface for geographical convenience. 
Isotherms are lines drawn around the world by the finger of the 
Almighty along which plants and animals hug congenial condi- 
tions. These lines are as stable as the earth's axis and enduring as 
their Fauna and Flora. It must not be understood that carna- 
tions will not grow north or south of the 50-degree isotherm, but 
if they do, they must modify that specific type of character which 
gives them esteemed value in that isotherm. Some forms of veg- 
etation reach their greatest perfection when far removed from the 
latitude of their nativity. The potato has an insignificant bulblet 
in its native home, but feeds millions on its monstrous tubers in a 
different latitude. There is a typical isotherm on which every 
species of vegetation will reach its highest evolvement for the 
gratification of man. 

The 50-degree isotherm has been established by the Agricul- 
tural Department of the United States government as far west as 
the loo-degree of west longitude, by twenty years of accurate ex- 
periments; west of that the department informs us the line is not 
so well established, but is thought to bend rapidly to the north. 
The line strikes the continent on the Atlantic seaboard near Bos- 
ton, runs irregularly on the north of the 40 degrees north latitude 
as far west as Denver and then from mountain ranges and gulf 
stream inclines suddenly toward the north, striking the Pacific 
Ocean near Vancouver Islands. 

The average altitude of the land on this isotherm above sea 
level is 1000 feet. It has an annual average rainfall of 40 inches, 



l28 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTUR!^. 

75 per cent of relative hutaidity, 50 per cent of sunshine, 45 de- 
grees of surface and 50 degrees of aerial temperatures. 

The greenhouse treatment of carnations equalizes the ex- 
tremes of the year's temperature but does not materially increase 
the number of annual heat units. There is always much moist- 
ure rapidly passing into vapor in housed carnations and absorbing 
an immense volume of latent caloric, thus keeping the surface 
temperature surprisingly low. Moisture and heat are inverse con- 
ditions. The thermometer and hygrometer teeters with the tem- 
perature: when one goes up the other goes down. 

The primative I^a Puritie type of carnations by selection, has 
been surely drifting into a different species, requiring more heat, 
which supports the assumption that greenhouse methods for car- 
nations has raised their annual mean temperature above that of 
the natural isotherm. Mrs. Lawson, one of the highest types of 
the new evolved species, was complained of by a grower to its 
originator, Mr. Fisher, for bursting its calyxes, and he suggested 
55 degrees night heat as the remedy. This is in full harmony 
with the author's contention of an evolution of a new species of 
carnation growing out of adaptation b}^ selection and requiring an 
artificial or natural isotherm of 55 or 60 degrees of annual heat to 
meet the requirements of its nature. 

The 50 degree isotherm leaves all California to the south of 
its belt. California's isotherm of 60 degrees has a type of carna- 
tion of its own, adjusted through forty years from the same par- 
ents to meet different climatic conditions and meets the aesthetical 
tastes of the people of that climate as fully as does the L,a Puritie 
type on the isotherm 50 degrees in north latitude. 

In 1892-3-4 there were introduced over one hundred fine 
named varieties of California carnations into the latitude of the 
semperflorens type, and it was proven that their modified type was 
not adapted immediately to the semperflorens zone. Mr. Linton 
of Piru City, California, says that carnations there are grown o?ff; 
they live for several years, grow best in their wet or winter season, 
and bloom best in their dry or summer season; they make a bush 



(:ititMAT^lO CONDITIO N^. 1^§ 

three feet high and two feet across; and a plant will blow from 200 
to 500 blooms in a season. 

Messrs. Hatfield and Tailby made special efforts to acclima- 
tize foreign carnations in the native zone of the semperflorens type 
and failed. Mr. Hill visited Europe in the interest of this genus 
of plants and purchased two hundred dollars worth of the most 
promising kinds to naturalize them in the semperflorens zone and 
in a short time had nothing to show for his time and expense. 
Mr. Dorner obtained the finest strain of seed possible from 
Eufurt, Germany, the storm center of splendid Selfs, Picotees 
and Bizars to acclamatize in America, but without success in con- 
tinuing their habits. Mr. Hancock imported one hundred and 
thirty varieties from Germany and afforded them the best possible 
conditions but without good results. 

Any of the foregoing types of carnations that possessed the 
particular inherent nature of distributing their enormous crops of 
bloom through their mature lives and could be inspired to do so 
by artificial heat, in a few generations could have been acclimated 
to the zone of the semperflorens type. Less than forty genera- 
tions of cross-fertilization and parental selection might have 
evolved a lyawson out of a raw sulking emigrant possessing these 
essential qualities which are pathognomonic of the species. No 
semperflorens carnation ever reached high merit or commercial 
importance that was not born within the boundary lines on the 
map. Nature ''invokes the curse of Rome" against invaders. 
The genealogy of Mrs. Joliff is legendary and has never been es- 
tablished. Peter Henderson was bred by Charlton in New York 
and disseminated by Nanz and Nauner of lyouisville, Ky. 

Not only carnations but all plants that are transfered to new 
climatic sections with different mean units of annual heat must be 
naturalized or acelimated. Corn raised in Virginia will not ripen 
in Canada's short season, Canada corn taken to Virginia is six, 
weeks' corn the first season, then lapses to its normal number of 
heat units. No carnation, though it be of the same Alegatiere 
origin, primarily inured to conditions in a difierent latitude ever 
gave immediate satisfaction when moved on to the 50 degree iso- 



180 



AMERICAN CARNATION CITLTI^RE. 



therm. THis fact is abundantly proven by one hundred carnations 
that have been imported from Europe and as many from Califor- 
nia, very few from either source having appeared on the recom- 
mended list the second time. Sievers of California is credited 
with the origin of Ethel Crocker, but it was not grown from Cali- 
fornia seed, and Siever's glass treatment of carnations at San Fran- 
cisco tends to normalize their nature to the requirements of the 50- 
degree isotherm. 

A higher mean annual temperature by greenhouse methods 
may, if it has not already done so, evolve a new species of carna- 
tion adapted to a higher artificial or natural isotherm than 50 de- 
grees. See chapter on a new species of carnation. 



^J^fJ-ZVYW. 




A TYPE OF CARNATION WITH SERRATED PETALS. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

MAP OF 50 DEGREE ISOTHERM -THE NORMAIv CLIMATE OF 

CARNATIONS -CREAM OF ALL THE CARNATIONS SINCE 

THE BIRTH OF ASTORIA— NAMES, COLORS, PLACE 

OF ORIGIN- ORIGINATORS' NAMES. 

THERE was an importation of fertilized carnation seed from 
Lyons, France, in 1858, another in 1862, another and two 
plants, La Puritie andEdwardsii, in 1864. From the seed 
of 1862 Astoria originated and is the oldest named carnation, to 
the manor born, in America. Its origination is credited to Wil- 
son, a neighbor florist of Zeiler, Gard & Co., who imported the 
seed. It was a yellow-variegiited variety of considerable merit, 
and Wilson named it Astoria after the name of the place he lived, 
on Long Island. Astoria was born and named two years before 
La Puritie and Edwardsii were imported. La Puritie was a 
foreigner though Lyons, France, is on the same isotherm as New 
York. La Puritie inherited many of the defects of its ancestors 
but enfolded in its nature mighty floral possibilities and has left a 
line of beauty trailing down the ages. It was far from being 
perfect but it was the best nature had evolved; it met the ideal of 
the time. A right that happens too soon is half wrong; perfection 
reached early is considered half a freak. The map will give the 
dynasty of royal blood that has come to rule the world of flowers 
and the boundaries of their empire. 

Astoria was the first named carnation born in America from 
Alegatiere seed cross-fertilized in France and brought over in 
1862. Lady Emma was the first carnation born in America from 
seed cross-fertilized by Charles Starr in 1875. The reader will 
notice the hiatus in the list of new carnations between the dates 
of 1875 and 1886. This was the nebulous era of American flori- 



i32 AMERICAN CARNATION ClJiiTUR:^. 

culture. There were no trade journals, no concert or organization 
among the hundred and fifty primitive floral establishments of that 
period. Carnations were grown from self-fertilized seed obtained 
from the pods of the progeny of La Puritie, Astora, Miss Joliff 
and their nameless compeers, and named as fancy suggested. Not 
more than a dozen florists in the country during this interregnum, 
meddled with or cared for the new born species of the Dianthus 
genus of plants, and not a new carnation was originated during 
these eleven years whose name passes on the records possessing 
merit. Miss Joliff originated at the same time and from the same 
source as Astoria. Both originated from Alegatiere's seed, though 
years before La Puritie and Kdwardsii were imported. It is singu- 
lar how regularly the royal line of new and great carnations have 
kept step with recurring years. There are but few carnations un- 
named and outside of the following chronological list that have 
reached general acceptance. 

But the humblest carnation that ever bloomed has been an 
evangel of the gospel of beauty, and with voiceless colors has 
brightened twilight gloom in some human heart. 

I have incorporated into the select list a number of new car- 
nations of 1 901 -2, not because their fate is fixed. Their destiny is 
hurrying forward to the crucial crisis of the people's verdict: their 
frowns are exile and their smiles are fame. A singular fatalit}^ 
often waits on new carnations that are filled with splendid 
promises. They become enfeebled by some mysterious marasmus 
that leaves them an easy prey to bacteriosis or other diseases and 
they quickly drop out of cultivation. This was the case with 
Uncle John, The Stuart, Kdna Craig, Empress, Sea Gull, Mammoth 
Pearl, Kerskin and others. Like the Ephemera, they lived for but 
a day, singing a ditt}' at dawn and a dirge at dusk. Then again 
some carnation seedlings are unpromising at birth, but born with 
an inspiring genus that points them steadily to the throne of Flora, 
as were Wm. Scott, Mrs. Bradt, Daybreak and Buttercup. 

In 1896 there were 1000 circulars sent to carnation growers 
asking them to return votes for and against all the carnations 




Qrginated by John Burton, Chestnut Hill, Phila , Pa. Disseminated in 1897. 



134 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

they new and grew. There were only fifteen that received a ma- 
jority of the votes. They were: 

Tidal Wave, Thos Cartledge, Lizzie McGowen, 

Puritan, Portia, Grace Wilder, 

Sweetbrier, Orange Blossoms, Daybreak, 

Stewart, Uncle John, Buttercup, 

Albertina, Wm. Scott, Silver Spray. 

Some varieties of carnations give eminent satisfaction in 
certain localities of the carnation zone and are absolute failures in 
other sections. What growers most admire in a carnation is its 
cosmopolitism, such as is possessed in Daybreak, that received 
but one vote for demerit in the carnation growing world. 

The humblest carnation that ever bloomed has been and edu- 
cator, served its purpose, and filled its mission. La Puritie was 
as much esteemed in its time as the grandest variety is now. 

These Royal Line carnations sprang from the loins of the race, 
and have no particular pedigree, individual line of ancestry or 
varietal blood. Greatness and genius are not hereditary, or trans- 
missible in either the animal or vegetable kingdom. Great men 
and great carnations, as a rule, spring from humble parents. 
Three of the greatest Emperors Rome ever had were followed by 
the most detestable sons that ever donned the purple. 

The subjoined chronological table gives the cream of all the 
carnations since the birth of Astoria in 1866, that have added 
lusture to the marvelous pageant of their unfolding grandeur, the 
date of their origin, the locality that gave them birth, their 
names, colors, and with whom they originated. Find their local 
nativity by figures on the zonal map corresponding with those in 
the first column of the table. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



135 



CHRONOIvOGlCAl, LIST OF THE ROYAL LINE OF THE REMONTANT 
HOUSE OF DIO ANTHOS. 



MAP 
NO. 


Name. 


Year. 


Where Originated and by Whom. 


Color. 




Atim, ist caj-n'n. 


1844 


M. Dalmias, Lyons, France. 






Improved. 


1856 


Alegatiere, Lyons, France. 




I 


ist Seed Imp'ed. 


1858 


Zeiler, GardCo.,Flatbush, E- 1. 


Failed. 


I 


2nd Seed Imp'ed 


1862 


( ( i( (» 1 1 << 




^ 


Astoria, seed '62. 
Two plants and 


1863 


Wilson, Astoria, E. I. 


Yel'-var 


I 


3rd Seed Im'ped. 


1864 


Zeiler, Gard Co., Flatbush, E.I. 




I 


La Puritie. 


1864 


< < <.(. (< << << 


Pink. 


I 


Edwardsii. 


1864 


t ( ( ( ( { ( < ( < 


White. 




Joliff, seed '63. 


1864 


Unknown, Eong Island. 


Pink. 


2 


lyady Emma. 


1875 


Chas. Starr, Avondale, Pa. 


Scarlet. 


2 


Springfield. 


1876 


( ( ( < (( (( 


Pink. 


2 


Chester Pride. 


1877 


( C ( i (1 < < 


Wh'-var 


2 


Buttercup. 


1878 


(> (i < < < f 


Yel'-var 


I 


Pres. DeGraw. 


1878 


Zeiler, Gard Co. Flatbush, E.I. 


White. 




Henzie's White. 


1879 


Breitmeyer, Detroit, Mich. 


White. 


4 


P. Henderson. 


1880 


Carlton, Nyack, N. Y. 


White. 


5 


Grace Wilder. 


1881 


Tail by, Wellessley, Mass. 


Pink. 


6 


Fascination. 


1882 


Thorp, Pearl River, N. Y. 


White. 


6 


J. Y. Murkland. 


1883 


( ( (( i ( ( i 


Scarlet. 


6 


Portia. 


1884 


< ( < < (< t ( 


Scarlet. 


7 


Anna Webb. 


1885 


Fisher, Framingham, Mass. 


Crimson 


8 


Ferd. Mangold. 


1886 


Simmons, Geneva, O. 


Crimson 


8 


Tidal Wave. 


1887 


(( fi u 


Pink. 


9 


Iv. E. Lamborn. 


1888 


Swayne, Kennett Square, Pa. 


White. 


8 


Silver Spray. 


1889 


Simmons, Geneva, O. 


White. 


lO 


Lizzie M'Gowen. 


1890 


McGowen, Orange, N. J. 


White. 


8 


Daybreak. 


189I 


Simmons, Geneva, 0. 


Pink. 


II 


Albertina. 


1892 


Dorner & Son Lafayette, Ind. 


Pink. 


9 


Sweetbrier. 


1893 


Swayne, Kennett Square, Pa. 


Pink. 


12 


Jubilee. 


1894 


Hill & Co , Richmond, Ind. 


Scarlet. 


13 


Alaska. 


1895 


Chitty, Patterson, N. J. 


White. 


12 


Flora Hill. 


1896 


Hill & Co., Richmond, Ind. 


White. 


3 


Gov. Pingree. 


1896 


Breitmeyer, Detroit, Mich. 


Wh'-var 



*Astoria was the first carnation plant grown in America, from seed cross-fertilized in 
France. Artifical fecundation was not practiced on carnationsin America for eleven years, 
duriag which period not a carnation is recorded on the roster of merit. Charles Starr 
was the first to practice the art, and in 1873 turned out the first carnation from seed, arti- 
fically fertilized, in America, which has been followed by a swelling tide of grand 
acquisitions. 



136 



AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 



MAP 
NO. 


Name. 


Year. 


Where Originated and by Whom. 


Color. 


M 


Glacier. 


1896 


Ward, Queens, L. L, N. Y. 


White. 


II 


White Cloud. 


1896 


Dorner, Lafayette, Ind. 


White. 


II 


Wm. Scott. 


1896 


( ( a ti 


Pink. 


15 


Bon Ton. 


1897 


Blake, Rockdale, Mass. 


Scarlet. 


14 


New York. 


1897 


Ward, Queens, L. I., N. Y. 


Crimson 


16 


Firefly. 


1897 


Hancock, Grand Haven, Mich 


Scarlet. 


7 


Servia. 


1897 


S Fisher, Framingham, Mass. 


White. 


14 


Gen. Maceo. 


1898 


Ward, Queens, L- I., N. Y. 


Crimson 


II 


J. H. Crane. 


1898 


Dorner & Son, Lafayette, Ind. 


Scarlet. 


17 


The Marquis. 


1898 


Marqnisee, Syracuse, N. Y. 


Pink. 


18 


Irene. 


1899 


Crabb& Hunter, Grand Rapids 


Pink. 


19 


Blm City. 


1899 


Kraus. New Haven, Conn. 


White. 


16 


Gold Coin. 


1899 


Hancock & Son, Grand Haven 


Yellow. 


20 


Geneve Lord. 


1900 


Weber & Son, Oakland, Md. 


Pink. 


1 1 


Morning Glory. 


1900 


Dorner & Son, Lafayette, Ind. 


Pink. 


14 


Mrs. Lawson. 


1900 


Fisher, Ellis, Mass. 


Pink. 


14 


Ethel Crocker. 


1900 


Sievers, California. 


White. 


22 


Olympia. 


1900 


May, Summit, N. J. 


Wh'-var 


II 


Lorn a. 


I9OI 


Dorner & Son, Lafayette, Ind. 


White. 


20 


Egypt. 


1901 


Weber & Son, Oakland. Md. 


Crimson 


20 


Norway. 


I9OI 


( ( « > ( i (I ii 


White. 


I 


Prosperity. 


I9OI 


Dailledouze Bros. Flatbush, L.I. 


Wh'-var 


14 


Gov. Roosevelt. 


I9OI 


Ward, Queens, L. I., N. Y. 


Crimson 


21 


Queen Louise. 


I9OI 


Dillon, Bloomsburg, Pa 


White. 


23 


Estelle. 


I9OI 


Witterstaetter, Sedamsville, O. 


Scarlet. 


25 


Mrs. Bird Coler. 


I9OI 


Molatsch, Brooklin, N. Y. 


Scarlet. 


27 


Midnight Sun. 


I9OI 


Weaver, Bird-in Hand, Pa. 


Crimson 


27 


Lancaster Pink 


I9OI 


4< it i( i( 


Pink. 


26 


Heilig's White. 


1902 


Heilig, Franklin, Pa. 


White. 


24 


Cressbrook. 


1902 


Warburton, Fall River, Mass. 


Pink. 


23 


Adonis. 


1902 


Witterstaetter, Sedamsville, O. 


Scarlet. 


28 


E. A. Nelson. 


1902 


Indianapolis, Ind. 


Pink. 



'"^'^, 



1 L 



1 ^i" .^ 

BS-'ljhe Red Figures correspond with those in the first coluL of the preceding /\ 'h^ ^ ' 

tabie hnd show the location in Ithe Carnation Zone where \he most prominent ' 
.Carnations have originated. 



M^'"' 



W 



X-^ 



':i^ 






C 



•^ 



The Zonal Map of the Dianthus Caryophyllus Scmperflorens. 



13 



II 
II 

15 
14 
16 

7 
14 
II 

i7 

18 

19 
16 
20 
1 I 
14 
14 
22 
II 
20 
20 
I 

14 
21 

23 

25 
27 
27 
26 

24 
23 
28 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

NEW SPECIES OF CARNATION— DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF 

DIANTHUS SUPERB A AND DIANTHUS SEMPERFLORENS 

—THEY REQUIRE ESSENTIAIvI^Y DIFFERENT 

TREATMENT. 

FOR fifty years, hundreds of men have been cross-fertilizing 
the best seedling carnations that have sprung from Alega- 
tiere's origination, and they have obtained a species of car- 
nation as distinct from Alegatiere's as it was from the species 
that gave it birth. Structural difference is the basis of all 
Classes, Orders, Genera and Species of the botanies. There is 
not the wide gape of difference between species as some imagine. 
Species do not spring into being full panoplied, like Juno from 
the brain oi Jupiter. Darwin says: "varieties are incipient species 
and require persistent congenial environment to take on the full 
and stable character of a species." It may be difl&cult today to draw 
detailed distinctions between the old and new species of carnations, 
but time will survey their boundaries and drive the division 
stakes. A species includes all individual plants that are alike in 
roots, stems, leaves and in florescence. Martyn says that there are 
as many species of plants as there are invariable structures in 
plants. If La Puritie and Mrs. Lawson had been found growing 
wild by Linnaeus, the plant wizzard of the world, he would have 
classed them as different species. 

La Puritie and Kdwardsii were true specimens of the Semper- 
fiorens type of the Alegatiere carnation. Their characters and 
habits are well remembered by all the oldest florists. They grew 
from 12 to 15 inches high, bore their stemless two-inch flowers in 
profusion on small, tough, wiry, procumbently inclined stems. 
They were cultivated on the dry-side, were small feeders, with web- 
like anastomosing roots, were immunes to drouth, loved micaceous 



138 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

and argillaceous soils, recovered quickly and without damage 
from exhausting dryness, revolted at manure foods, loved only 
the chemical elements in the soil, were hardy above zero, and 
florescent at 40 degrees night heat. They were wonderfully 
productive of bloom, fifty buds and blooms often being counted 
at a time on good specimens. The relative length of their 
stamens and pistils indicated a pendulous flower and plant of 
sprawling habit. Their flowers averaged twenty full petals, were 
fertile in seeds, beautifully fringed and emitting a strong exhila- 
rating clove fragrance. 

Lawson, Roosevelt and Novelty are well defined types of a 
new species of carnations. I will epitomize some of the distinctive 
features of Lawson published by its originator in the Florists' 
Exchange. 

"Cuttings struck in March are best for early blooming; 
in April tor later blooming. Blooms bleach in the sun, must 
be shaded early and deepened as season advances; must be 
kept in a night temperature of 55 degrees to keep from bursting 
its calyx; cuttings must be carried forward into 4-inch pots, no 
check permitted to its growth, and should be mulched with pul- 
verized sheep manure every two weeks from November to April." 

This evolved type of carnations will grow 4 feet high and 
support immense flowers 4 inches in diameter on great stiff stems 
3 feet long, which have monstrous soft succulent nodes, sparce 
foliage consisting of broad, thick, fleshy leaves. These plants have 
large fibrous roots, are gross feeders on humus, demand much 
water, circulating an immense volume of vegetable blood, and re- 
quire a night temperature of 55 degrees, which is equal to an an- 
nual average of 75 degrees, wnthin 5 degrees of that of the equa- 
tor; they cannot recover from a drouth. If their growth is arrested 
their tide of vitality is never fully resumed. 

Isotherms are nature's imperious method for differentiating the 
Flora of the world into Orders, Genera and Species. Forty years 
of artificial heat in winter has evolved a new species of carnation, 
modified its esoteric nature to require more moisture, different 
food, higher heat, a tropical vitality and a larger structure. 



NEW SPECIES OF CARNATIONS. 139 

By way of resume I present a more condensed argument 
favoring the assumption that a new species of carnation has 
originated from the Alegatiere type. Darwin, Huxley, and all 
authorities worth considering, admit that varieties are the parents 
of species; that species are the offspring of a single primitive 
stock, and each is a natural or cultivated variety and may be arti- 
ficially originated, conformed and established by selection and 
environments. 

"Special Creation" and "Transmutation" are the Only two 
hypotheses respecting the origin of species. One views their 
origin as arising by a supernatural creative act. The other holds 
that species are modifications of pre-existing species through 
purely natural causes. 

One of these theories assumes that a species is formed at once 
and at the moment the male and female elements meet in the ovary. 
The other, that species are initiated by varieties, and by natural 
or artificial selection and by physical environments gradually 
moulded into a separate class. And that classes or species are 
known as being separate by morphology (structures) , or physiology 
(vitalities), or by both structure and vitality, and that these 
constitute the boundary line between species. 

For forty years, selection has been practiced with the species 
of carnations of the I^a Puritie type, originated with Alegatiere 
and conditioned with new environment, and a new species of car- 
nation is the resultant. 

Its morphological boundary lies between a procumbent plant 
with a two-inch stemless pendent flower and an erect plant with 
a four -inch flower on a three-foot stem. Its physiological bound- 
ary lies between a plant whose nature is on the arid side of 
culture, requiring little manurial nutriments and yielding its 
florescence in a 45 degrees temperature; and a plant requiring 55 
degrees of heat to afford its bloom, requiring much moisture and 
manurial foods, impatient of all aridness, and circulating a great 
volume of vegetable blood. Either the morphological or phys- 
iological difference constitutes, according to authority, enough of 
a divergence to install a new species. 



140 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE, 

Dianthus superba embraces both structural and vital differ- 
ence from Dianthus semperflorens. A new species is not per- 
manent unless the conditions are persistent through which it was 
evolved. Humanity gravitates towards the gutter which civiliz- 
ing forces must ever antagonize. An evolved species of the 
vegetable kingdom is ever gravitating towards ancestral types un- 
less counterpoised by selection and culture. Accept or reject the 
assumption of a new species of carnations, the fact remains, a 
different treatment is already recognized for a carnation blowing a 
4-inch corolla on a 3-foot stem and one blooming a 2-inch flower 
without a stem. Nature asserts with the majesty of command, a 
different culture for the two varieties, which would not occur if 
there were not a different vitality to culture. The cultivation 
of neither kind will ever be abandoned. They fill different 
niches in the Temple of Flora, but for scientific and commer- 
cial purposes the two species should not be confounded. At present 
a line, though tortuous and vague, would be: plants producing 
flowers under 3 inches in diameter retain their present name, 
Dianthus sempei florens; and plants producing flowers 3 inches 
and over, normally receive the name, Dia?ithus superba. 

This would recognize a botanical fact, make market reports 
intelligent, set the pace for prices, suggest cultural treatment, 
classify excellence and dignify the new origination with the as- 
sumption of an appropriate name, hallowed with antiquity and 
sanctioned by the centuries. 

There were 36 new varieties of carnations registered and 
introduced or disseminated in 1901. Giving the originator's de- 
scription: six of these will blow 4-inch flowers; 20 bear flowers 3 
inches and under; the calyxes of ten never burst. This list is 
composed of 17 pink, 10 white, 5 scarlet, 2 yellow- variegated, i 
white-variegated and i crimson. Of these, 7 originated in New 
York, 7 in Pennsylvania, 4 in Illinois, 4 in Rhode Island, 4 in 
Massachusetts, 4 in Indiana, 2 in Maryland, 2 in California, i in 
New Jersey and i in Ohio. More new carnations have originated 
in Pennsylvania than in any other state; nearly one hundred 
varieties came from the vicinity of Kennett Square. None of this 



AN OLD CARNATION ENGRAVING. 



141 



list were birthed outside of the carnation zone, nor has there 
ever been any other valuable commercial carnations. As to the two 
California introductions, see the chapters bearing on their nature. 




The above engraving is a group of three carnations, Ed- 
wardsii, white, red and variegated I^a Purities. It was obtained by 
the late Charles Starr, and is the first engraving made from the 
Alegatiere remontant type in this country, possibly in the world. 
It was engraved about 1880, and has been in the writer's possession 
fifteen years. Without accurate data as to the time it was made, 
or the scale of size on which it was wrought, the inference is safe 
that it dates back toward the era that carnations began to be 
esteemed and cultivated in America. The cut represents flowers 



142 AMERICAIC CARNATlOlsr CULTURE. 

two-thirds their natural size. The critical observer will notice the 
long quill-like calyxes and the necessarily long claws of the petals, 
lifting them well out of the cup before they broaden to burst the 
caylx. This cut represents, as no description can, the early true 
type of "Dianthus Semperfiorens." 

On the opposite page is a cut of "Sea Gull," (Furnished by 
the courtesy of K. G. Hill) and is the exact size of this phenom- 
enal product. It won the Silver Flagon prize over McGowen at 
the Madison Square Exhibition in New York in the fall of 1891. 
It became posessed by some occult devil and was never generally 
disseminated, yet it was the herald of a "New Species," a 
spectacular prophecy of the genus "Dianthus Superba," which is 
now history. 




SEA GULU 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE NEMESIS OF CARNATIONS-CAUSE;; OF^ THEIR FLOWERS 
"GOING TO SIvEEP"-CAUSE OF THEIR CALYXES BURST- 
ING— RUST A CONSTITUTIONAU DISEASE- STIGMO- 
NOSE VS. BACTERIOSIS. 

AN ideal carnation for pots would materially differ from those 
grown on benches for commercial flowers. It would have 
a compact base, canes of moderate length, given to a pro- 
fusion of average size crown and terminal flowers on short stems. 




The susceptible nature of carnations to the modif\Hng influence 
of the florists' art by parental selection and cross-pollenization 
could doubtless in a few years obtain this type and overcome the 
plant's dislike of root restraint in pots and develop a variety that 



BREVITIES. 145 

might be immensely popular as pot plants. The change required 
would be chiefly structural, which features are most easily obtain- 
ed by cross breeding. Carnationists who remember "Snowden" 
will see in its form and habit a typical carnation pot plant. 

Carnations propagated by cuttings in August carried through 
winter in cold frames and planted out in early spring will bloom 
from June until heavy frost. 



Esthetics would not have a carnation over three and a half to 
four inches in diameter, on a stem stiff as a pike pole, nor with 
petals quilled and formal as a dahlia; such qualities would rob 
the flower of all its artistic grace. 



The calyxes of carnations are being increased in capacity; 
their fibrous structure is more compact and of slower change 
than the vascular petals. If adaption by selection had directed it- 
self to longer claws for the petals there would be fewer ruptured 
calyxes today. 

Nature carries relics of all its progressive achievement in the 
nature and anatomy of every evolving species of plants and ani- 
mals. In the physiology and structures of every variety of car- 
nations there are vestigal homologues and heredities of every 
progressive level the species has reached since Theophrastus ex- 
claimed, Dio Anthos ! Among a thousand seedlings seventy-five 
per cent will be reversals to some of these abandoned levels. 



There is but one way that carnations can be successfully and 
satisfactorily grown by the people. It is to procure September 
struck plants from a carnation grower early in the spring; plant 
them in the lawn as taste suggests; neatly stake them and they will 
afford a profusion of boutonaires and flowers until heavy frosts, 
and be as decorative and cheap as geraniums. Pages that have 
been written on the popular cultivation of the carnation are Qon- 
densed in the above ^jr-<:<2M(?flrr^ epigram. 



146 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTDRE. 

Mrs. Fisher and Mrs. McGowen are the best tested out-door 
summer bloomers. 

Thomas Dale of Canada, a competent judge, says Canada 
cannot produce carnations equal to those grown in the States. 



Mature carnation plants are not hardy in the temperate zone, 
while their seedlings are, which shows how easily cultivated 
strains of vegetation return to their normal type. 



Large carnation flowers are obtained at the expense of many 
smaller ones. Nature is economical. When it is extravagant in 
one direction it always economizes in another. 



Dark pink carnations and those with solid colors have the 
best constitutions, and are more florescent and cosmopolitan in 
their habits, than the shaded and variegated kinds. 



Quality in carnation flowers is the demand of its admirers, 
and the slogan of successful growers. Fame and fortunes of 
culturists have been built on "quality." Perseverence and close 
attention to details in growing is the evangel of success and 
quality. 



The American continent has not yet given mankind as great 
a variety of food and flowers as some others, but in it originated 
the great food staple of Indian corn, and the potato. It has 
developed in Dianthus Superba, the loftiest symbol of poetry and 
the potato the most substantial prose of life. 



The great commercial and vital differences between pinks 
with their marvelous single crops of multitudinous flowers, in 
July and August, and carnations, are: the immense short-lived 
crop of bloom with pinks is evenly distributed through the life of 
carnations from October to July and the latter kindly respond to 
the sorcery of artificial heat, which is death to pinks. 



BREVITIES. 14t 

In 1880 there was but one floral establishment in America; 
in 1820, 4; 1830, 11; 1840, 36; 1850, 76; i860, 112. In 1900, 10,- 
000 that rise to a high grade of commercial dignity, or fully 15,000 
all considered. 



of plant 



The production of infertile carnation flowers is but a phase 
ui plant foliation. The foliage is the type, the petals in the 
corolla are the antitype of the foliage, as is the spathe of the anti- 
type of that plant's leaf. 

It has been discovered that sulphur, and possibly other cheap 
chemicals are often mixed with bales of tobacco stems to preserve 
their fresh appearance; burning such stems is injurious to plants 
and ruinous to flowers. 



The secretary of the Agricultural Department estimates that 
there are $12,500,000 worth of flowers sold each year in the 
United States, and one-third of this vast sum is realized from the 
sale of more than 100,000,000 carnation blooms. 



There never has been a rust-proof carnation. Those specimens 
that have been esteemed so, were merely plants, or batches, that 
by accident escaped Thrips, Red Spider, Greenfly and other 
puncturing pests to lesion their epidermis, with culture spot in 
which the spores of rust could vegetate. 

The cause of carnations going to sleep at early and unusual 
hours has been a source of much perplexity. Carnation petals are 
vascular and sensitively organized. Their mission is brief and to 
dazzle by glare. They begin to wilt the instant fertilization is ef- 
fected. Many gases are quickly poisonous to them; they soon per- 
ish if cut before they mature; they shrivel in a dry atmosphere if 
developed in a wet one; they die if taken from an ice refrigerator 
into the warm sun. Grown in normal conditions, cut at the 
proper time, and kept in congenial environments, carnation flow- 
ers may be merchantable for nearly three weeks. 



148 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

Every grower, who buys a new carnation, buys a new char- 
acter that imperiously demands conditions and yields none. 



At the last meet of the Peripatetic Club of Dianthic Oratory, 
\h.'^fle2ir de lis of Ellis won its own gold medal. An unnamed in- 
mate of Cottage Garden carried back to the jewel box the "Holy 
Grail" from whence it came. The pro-nomen of Hector of San 
Juan Hill, and Colorado coyotes won easy honors for the fame of 
Queens. 

A good commercial solid yellow carnation has never yet 
been introduced. They have been so unprofitable that many 
growers do not cultivate them, but use some of the yellow-varie- 
gated kinds as a substitute. In fact, a pure yellow carnation has 
several unmistakable features of a divergent species. 



The commerce during the fall of field-grown carnation plants 
is very great. They are safely and conveniently shipped any 
distance by wrapping their roots with what earth that may adhere, 
in moist moss and setting them erect in a box half the height 
of the plants and protecting the tops by an open frame nailed to 
the box. The plants should be moderately close. If crowded and 
long confined they will heat and suffer damage. 

Since Chas. Starr, hardy pinks have had an enthusiastic 
champion in C. Eisele of Philadelphia. Mr. Eisele has crossed the 
remontant carnation with the Marguerites and produced some mag- 
nificent hybrids, Jupiter, light pink; Murcury, scarlet; Minerva, 
deep pink; Neptune, magenta violet; Saturn, crimson; Uranus; 
maroon; Venus, white; Vulcan, red; and a number of others. Mr. 
Eisele is also noted for his success in blooming the remontant 
carnation during summer months. His system consists in striking 
cuttings the first of October, carrying them in three-inch pots, in 
a dry bottom cold frame through the winter, and transplanting in 
the open, as soon as irost is out of the ground. They begin to 
bloom the first of July and continue until late in the fall. 



BREVITIES. 149 

There is a tireless strain for large carnations with stiff stems. 
There is an aesthetic meridian for size somewhere between a 
species of carnation called micro petalon, because it requires a 
microscope to see its petals, and a corolla the size of a sunflower. 
Good taste draws the line on a three-inch flower on a stem pen- 
dant with grace. 



In this work, the treatment of the La Puritie type of carnation 
is chiefly considered. The habits and culture of a new evolving 
type of carnation are quite different. The mean annual temperature 
required by the two species are essentially unlike. Isotherms 
are nature's sovereign methods for diversifying species. 



It is hard to settle the outlines of a perfect carnation flower. 
There is an enduring contour of beauty if quixotic taste could 
reach it. That the centre of the flower should be well built up, 
approaching a hemisphere with petals moderately fringed and 
standing at right angles with the stem, seems to meet the present 
requirement of taste and grace. 



The following scale of points in a carnation flower has been 
discussed by some men interested in carnations It is immaterial 
whether their standard of comparison is real or ideal. The signifi- 
cance of the scale resides in the relative importance of the struc- 
tural features of a carnation's corolla, not in the opinion of a few 
or their aspirations for the beautiful according to their pro- 
crustean standard. 

Color 25 

Size 20 

Calyx 5 

Stem 20 

Substance 10 

Form 15 

Fragrance 5 

Total 100 



150 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

Mr. Hill, after his tonr of inspecting carnations in Europe, 
says: "The}^ know but little about blooming carnations in Eng- 
land; as far as I could learn it was only practiced by a few ama- 
teur florists and from the American standpoint was anything but 
a success." 



It is of interest to those possessing, or proposing the posses- 
sion of an area of glass for growing carnations, to know of the 
Florists' Hail Association. The details of this insurance organi- 
zation has been under the secretaryship of Mr. Esler since it was 
started in 1888, which is strong testimony of his efficiency. One 
of his reports shows the growth and favor with which it is re- 
ceived. 

Year. Glass Insured. Reserve Fund. 

1888 811,951 Square feet $ 491.23 

1889 1.327,240 " 743-07 

1890 2,132,118 " 1,322.46 

1891 3,104,583- " 1,855.84 

1892 4,078,725 '' 2,542,13 

1893- 4,830,780 " 3,107.12 

1894 6,653,695 " 3.639-55 

1895 7,489,312 " 4,094-39 

1896 8,003,820 " . 4,62177 

1897 10,097,209 " 5,215.26 

1898 .10,189,097 " 5,862.48 

1899 11,209,865 " 6,649.25 

Secretary I. C. EvSler, of the Association says: "On the ist 
day of August, 1901, it had 1020 members, insured 14,541,382 
square feet of glass; paid $5,328 55 for losses during the year; 
total receipts for the year, $10,660 30; and had on hand at the end 
of the fiscal year, $8,759.95 available as an emergency fund. 

Glass belonging to members of the Association to the extent 
of 70,390 feet was broken during the year ending Aug. i, 1901; 
and since its organization in June 1887, it has paid 510 losses, in- 
volving all expenditures, of over $45,000. Of 82 losses by hail in 
J900-1, all but 19 were in the months of June and July. 



BREVITIES. 151 

The edges of the petals of carnation flower leaves may be 
serrated, indented, fringed or plain, or possess all degrees of 
serrulations from a deeply cut, coarse fringe to a simple undeco- 
rated border. 

Mrs. E. A. Nelson, on page 79, and Alba Superba, on page 
133, are fairly good specimens of the last two types. The cuts on 
the adjoining page represent the serrated and indented classes of 
leaves. These varied adornments of the rims of carnation petals 
are the result of the conflicting play of hereditary forces. The 
ancestors of carnations were noted for their petals being deeply 
cut and fantastically fimbriated. 

B. T. Galoway, United States Department of Agriculture, 
with census data of 1900 before him, estimates the area of green- 
house glass in America at 30,000,000 square feet, (the type, by 
mistake, in a former page says 300,000,000), the number of com- 
mercial floral establishments at 10,000, exclusive of thousands of 
small glass structures in which artificial heat is employed. He 
epitomises deductions from the above as follows: 

"The estimated value of the establishments in this country, 
including houses, boilers, and all fixtures, is placed at 50 cents 
for each square foot of glass, or $11,250,000 in all. The income 
of the producer will average 50 cents per square foot annually, or 
$11,250,000, and double that amount when viewed from the 
standpoint of the retailer. Considering the amount from the re- 
tailer's standpoint, therefore, the total value of the annual output 
is $22,500,000 or $1 for each square foot of glass. 

"It is estimated that the retail value of cut flowers sold 
annually is $12,500,000, the estimated apportionment of the sum 
being, for — 

Roses $6,000,000 

Carnations 4,000,000 

Violets 750,000 

Chrysanthemums 500,000 

Miscellaneous flowers, in- 
cluding lilies, etc 1,250,000 

"Estimating the average retail value of roses, carnations and 
violets at $6, $4 and $1 per hundred, respectively, the total num- 



152 AMEBICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

ber of each sold annually, based on the above values, would be, of — 

Roses 100,000,000 

Carnations 100,000 000 

Violets 75,000,000 

Total 275,000,000 

"The retail value of the plants sold is placed at $10,000,000. 
Taking the plant trade as a whole and the country in the aggre- 
gate, the average-sized pot used is estimated to be 3 inches, and 
the average retail price 10 cents per pot This means that there 
are no less than 100,000,000 plants sold every year. 

To handle this business in its entirety requires probably an 
average of not less than one man for every 1,500 square feet of 
glass, or 20,000 men. 

"My carnations burst more than usual. What's the matter?" 
The calyxes of carnations are a fibrous fabric, easily torn length- 
wise and are developed before the petals, which are vascular and 
of rapid growth, requiring an active circulation and the stimulus 
of heat and light to lengthen their claws and lift them out of 
their calyxes formed of fibers, feebly joined, and easily ruptured. 

Nothing will dignify the floral profession more than a gen- 
eral knowledge of botany. Every man that aspires to be a florist 
should understand the general history of the plants he grows, 
their anatomy, physiology and pathology. Floriscs need not 
be botanists in the technical sense of the term. If they were, they 
would likely not be practical florists. The florist deals in aesthetics, 
his stock in trade are the "vSmiles ot Nature," his humble vocation 
keeps him sordid, he is compelled to rake muck piles for grains 
of gold, and to measure a good carnation by the amount of money 
it can make him. 

Some varieties of carnations produce flowers with thin and 
feebly organized petals which soon wilt after they are cut. There 
has been no system devised to scale the keeping qualities of 
a carnations bloom, nor does this feature in new carnations enter 
into the roster of their many alleged vices or virtues. 



BREVITIES. 153 

The greatest draft on the life forces of carnation plants is at 
their blooming period. They are then crystallizing precious protein 
compounds in their seeds, as food for embryonic plants. It is 
then they need nourishing and easily assimilated plant food. 



The petals of a carnation flower may be shaded, flaked, 
penciled, or dotted. They may have plain borders or be notched, 
serrated or fringed. These forms and conditions are differentia- 
tions of the ancestral types, modified by hereditary influence. 



The first flowers of some seedlings have unruptured and per- 
fect calyxes; after that they may uniformly burst. This peculiarity 
extends to the first, second and third generations of the life of the 
same variety. The structural indices of a non-bursting carna- 
tion flower lie in the length of the claws which lift the petals 
out of the calyx before they broaden and mature. 



There is a renewed effort to grow American carnations in the 
foggy climate of old England. The following carnations of 
American origin are now offered by English growers; G. H. Crane, 
Maud Adams, Melba, Flora Hill, Triumph, Bridesmaid, Day- 
break, Victor, Mrs. McGowen, Bon Ton, Evelina, I^ily Dean, 
Mayor Pingree, Mrs. James Dean, Painted Lady, Empress, Mrs. 
Geo. M. Bradt and White Cloud. The favorites so far appear to 
be Flora Hill and White Cloud. 



It would be anomalous for a broad petal to be transposed 
from the leaf of a La Puritie carnation one-sixteenth of an inch 
wide; but not strange, as has been noticed, for petals one-and-a- 
half inches wide to be the antitype of leaves on the same plant 
one-half inch across, and the law of proportion carried out in the 
size of the plant and its corolla. There never will be four-inch 
carnation flowers on Alegatiere's La Puritie species until nature 
plays a vaudeville with species and the law of proportion, 



154 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

Small carnation plants from the field, carried in 5-inch pots in 
a good cold frame through the winter, make magnificent blooming 
pot plants for spring sales. 



Carnation cuttings should be inserted in the sand deep 
enough and made sufiiciently firm to enable them to maintain 
vigorously a vertical position. 



Whither conditions favoring the best production of bloom in 
carnation plants are the ones that afford the best cuttings is a ques- 
tion of some uncertainty. I think the temperature too high and 
the nutrient stimuli too great to yield a first class cutting from 
the true semperflorens type of carnation plants, probably not for 
its new and cognate species. But plants conditioned to produce 
bloom are now accepted as proper to afford cuttings and their 
yield is made secondary to the crop of flowers. 



The profits of growing carnation flowers depend on the 
management of the plants and the market to be reached. It is safe 
to estimate that carnation plants, through the season, will average 
twenty flowers each; ten square feet of glass wnll cover one hun- 
dred plants, including alleys. The price of the flowers through the 
season will average, in anj^ market, ten dollars per thousand. 
High grade fancy flowers, in affluent markets, have command- 
ed from sixty to one hundred dollars per thousand. 



'^Practical Floricidture,''' published in 1868, states that colored 
carnations sold in the New York market then for twenty dollars 
per thousand and whites for forty dollars The flowers then pro- 
duced were without stems and ranged from one to two inches in 
diameter. The excellent trade papers now published, with 
the daily price circulars from wholesale dealers, keep the 
producers in constant touch with the reigning prices of carnation 
flowers. The season, quality, and market, control the price of 
the carnation grower's product. 



BREVITIES. 155 

It is an irrevocable law of nature, and demonstrated by ex- 
perience, that it requires a definite number of units of heat, light 
and moisture for any vegetable organism to reach maturity, and 
round the object of its existence. One great desire of carnation 
growers is to obtain carnation flowers earlier in the season than 
the plants have commonly afforded them. If the above is a 
sound law in vegetable physiology, does it not contain a solution 
of the problem of early carnation flowers ? How is it possible for 
a carnation starting its life in February or March, and carried on 
any lines approximating the nature of the plant, to receive the 
number of units of heat and light that nature could afford it dur- 
ing its vegetative season between Maich and November? 

The flowering, or reproductive, period of its life is well under- 
stood. It is its vegetative era that embodies the rebus for early- 
flowers. Growing carnations under glass, with greater or less 
success, is a supremely abnormal and artificial method. If the car- 
nation's life was started in August or September and carried health- 
fully forward with approximately normal environments, would 
it not have time to husband the units required for the puberty 
of its vegetative life, and start with flowers correspondingly earlier 
on its reproductive era ? If it would not, the assumed law is at 
fault, lor nature makes no mistakes. If the law is sound, a ma- 
tured biennial carnation plant could be benched the first of July, 
ready to start on its lyric of life begetments of which flowers are 
the proem and embryos in seed the appendix. 

A ripened carnation plant is one that has finished the first 
season's growth, elaborated its juices, crystalized and deposited in its 
medulla and the interstices of its tissues the protein compounds to 
sustain a coming life fraught with the loftiest purpose of it being. 
The desire and destiny with man is to live beyond the grave. The 
object and purpose of a plant is to survive beyond its limit of life, 
in embryonic seeds. 

The puberty of a biennial carnation plant is the somnolent 
period, the coma of winter's cold, the change in its vital functions 
from vegetative to reproductive forces, between existing and persist- 



156 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

ing, between the yesterday and the tomorrow of life. (It is then 
a ripened '^\am'i. All fruits are but ripened pistils.) 

The stems of the plant are then firm and compact; its nodes are 
solid, almost woody; leaves tough and leathery: stems erect, cir- 
culating but little sap; it has stopped growing and is fortifying for 
the swoon of winter. It should then be lifted and benched, it 
matters not if the soil is dust, without a particle of dirt to the 
roots; the thermometer 90 degrees in the shade, with a little 
moisture the plant will scarcely flag. It has then rounded the 
first epoch of its life, vitality is torpid, heretofore it has lived to 
grow, hereafter it will live to persist. The same conditions 
apply to all biennials. 

This fact crystallizes in itself all nebulous theories and ex- 
periences of carnation growers about early and late lifting, in 
warm or cool, in wet or dry weather. The principle is as inexor- 
able as the law of nature governing biennial life. 



There has existed in America about 1000 named carnations 
since the first were introduced in 1864; about 200 of this number 
have been importations from Europe and California. It is sense- 
less history to cumber records with the names of worthless and 
extinct carnations. 



There are two financial features in growing carnations. One 
is for the production of their bloom, the other is for the "pips" and 
rooted cuttings the crop may afford. Most growers combine both 
features, and all growers endeavor to root enough cuttings to 
supply their own demand for plants. 



There are statements in an old work called "Flori Historica," 
published in 1829, that carnations then had perfect calyxes, long 
stems, and bore three and a half-inch flowers. They must have 
been a different carnation from the species now known by that 
name, for the kind in cultivation now did not originate until 
thirty years after that work was printed, 



BREVITIES. 157 

Syringing with bordeaux mixture discolors the foliage of 
carnations. 



To understand the physiology of a carnation's life is to 
stand on the ultimate in growing it. 



Carnations are being bred toward strong canes and away from 
fragrance and productiveness of bloom. 



Cultivate carnations in the field after each rain and between 
rains. Cultivation is a substitute for rain. 



Scrupulous cleanliness and close attention to all the details 
in growing carnation will make success a certainty. 



A carnation grower, with the description given of the dis- 
eases in Chapter XX, and a dollar and a half microscope, can 
easily determine the character of any trouble that affects his 
plants. 



Every carnation grower should have hygrometers, and ther- 
mometers in his houses, and a microscope in his pocket. These 
instruments ring the bells when the Red Spider, frigidity, and 
disease knock at the door. 



The best varieties of carnations {^Diajithus Semper florens) is 
the loftiest evolution of the little five-petaled pink, mentioned by 
Theophrastus two thousand years ago. Its main development 
has been in the last fifty years. The science of botany demon- 
strated the practicability of artificial hybridization, and cross-fertil- 
ization, by which the carnation in the last forty years has reached 
an evolvement that the slow and uncertain processes of nature 
would not have accomplished in as many centuries. 



158 AMERICAN CARNATION CTJLTURE. 

The Wisconsin College of Agriculture has experimented on 
watering plants with water at 32 degrees and 75 degrees Fahr. and 
finds no perceptible difference in the effect on the plants, whether 
they were in or out of doors. 



The statement is made with some assurance that out of 4720 
kinds of flowers in Europe only 420 have pleasant odors. Per- 
fume differs with different persons, and fragrance was not originat- 
ed to please the olfactories of man as much as this sense in insects. 



The perpetual type of carnation differs from its parental 
border species by continually remounting itself with flowers in 
response to the stimuli of artificial heat, but will not produce 
more flowers during eight months of its flowering period than its 
ancestors did, and does, in six or eight weeks. The carnation 
merely trails glory through a longer duration and through a 
period of the year in which flowers are more appreciated. 

Sterilizing the soil on greenhouse benches is now claiming 
considerable attention. The Massachusetts Experiment Station 
has devised a system of pipes under the benches through which 
steam can be turned and a heat of 200 degrees quickly obtained 
in the soil. It is claimed that highly heated soil produces better 
crops, converts elements in the soil into plant food, besides destroy- 
ing latent eggs, worms, pupus, spores and germs of the nematodes. 



There are many instances when benched carnations need an 
antidote for pests when cloudy damp weather would forbid its 
application in liquid form. "Hammond's Slug Shot" can be used 
as a dry powder, and spread over plants with a dry duster or blower, 
and is found effective. This composite powder can also be ap- 
plied in liquid form, through a sprayer or pump. It is obtained 
from seedmen throughout the States, put up in perforated screw- 
top canisters for convenient and immediate use. 



CARNATION '^HElLia'S WHITE,'' 



159 




HEIUG'S WHITE. 



This carnation originated with P. Heilig of Franklin, Pa., in iJ 
yet disseminated. 



and is not 



160 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

If it were not for usurping the prophetic functions of Isaiah, 
I would name a carnation destined to sound a note on the key- 
board of progress that has not yet been heard, but prophecy is al- 
ways doubtful until it becomes histor3^ 



Mutilation by disbudding is not a factor in evolving carna- 
tion flowers with longer stems. Emasculation is not transmissi- 
ble. No feature in carnations has developed more rapidly than 
the length of the flower stems. It ranges in 40 years from a flower 
without a stem to one on a three-foot stem. The drawing nature 
of glass has powerfully abetted selection in evolving this feature. 



The calyx is the outer series or whorl of floral leaves. Or- 
ganology has failed to discover the true functions for either the 
calyx or petals of a flower. The calyx is not an essential part of 
a flower. In poppies and mayapples it falls off when the flower 
begins to open, and is entirely absent in the lily, tulip, and flowers 
of many forest trees. 

Since the introduction and cultivation of carnations in Amer- 
ica the calyx part of its flowering mechanism has been very de- 
fective. The joined edges of its sepals have been disproportion- 
ally weak and ruptured from the pressure of the petals within; the 
petals falling down between the torn edges, destroying all the 
beauty and value of the flower. It is thought that a disproportion- 
ate amount of moisture adds to the turgescence of the petals and 
aggravates the lesion, while ventilation and sunshine strengthen 
the sutures of the sepals and lessen the difficulty. 

Beyond these two insufficient therapeutic suggestions no 
remedy has been discovered, or scientific cause assigned for car- 
nations rupturing their calyxes. If all artificial aid was with- 
drawn from carnations, as they now exist, a cataclysm of extinc- 
tion would immediately follow. All that would soon remain 
would be a five-petaled pink. The first step in their devolution 
would be a reduction of the number of their petals and the restor- 



BREVITIES. 161; 

ation of more vigorous organs of reproduction. The compara- 
tively monstrous calyx which has been slowly developing for 
forty years would be the last to follow in the wake of their degra- 
dation, as it was the last to emerge and conform to an enlarged 
corolla. Nature's supreme concern is the continued life of a 
species. If one mode, or process of life continuance is lost, nature 
instinctively substitutes some other mode for self continuance. 

Carnations are a horticultural form of the primitive Dianthus 
Caryophillus. Their flowers are sterilized by the artificial multi- 
plication of their petals. Nature facilitates their continuance by 
dis- articulations, or easily rooted cuttings. This process was 
deemed impossible before Alegatiere's time and is not yet prac- 
ticed in Europe. 

There is a pseudomorphous unlining of the inner series or 
whorls of floral leaves. The multiplication of the petals is at the 
expense of the fertile stamens and pistils. This modification ob- 
tained by selective breeding has not so easily affected the calyx 
or outer whorl. The calyx was not quickly involved in the 
evolutionary line taken by other parts of the carnation flower. 
It made a slower deflection from its primal type. 

The natural and primitive capacity of a tubular carnation 
calyx was to hold only the long slender claws of five petals. 
Artificial development of the flower demanded of it a capacity to 
hold the broad fleshy leaves, and short thick claws of fifty petals. 
As an organ the calyx was not in the evolutionary swim with 
other parts of the flower. The calyx did not keep synchronal step 
with the unfoldment of the petals. 

This disproportionate development of the different whorls of 
floral leaves is not unusual in flowers. The sepals are augmented 
in the ranunculus; stamens in the cactus; and the pistils in the 
wild buttercup, and the petals in the carnations. Carnations' 
calyxes rupture at the seam of union between the sepals. The 
leaf is a primal organ of a plant, the sepals of the calyx are 
slightly modified leaves of the plant, retaining the texture, chloro- 
phyl, etc., of the true leaf, hence a greater resistence to change, a 



162 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

more stable anchorage to the type of this primal organ of plant- 
life than that possessed by the pseudo-morphous petals. 

The structure of the petals of a flower is frail and degenerate, 
their function is not known, they are not an essential feature of a 
flower's purpose. It is not strange that such tissues in a flower 
should be the first and fastest to yield to the blnndishmentsof high 
culture. Herein resides the cause of ruptured calyxes in carna- 
tions. The only radical cure for it is to breed poly-petalous 
corollas back toward their five-petaled ancestors, or breed the 
capacity of the calyxes forward for a fifty petaled corolla. The 
first will not be done, the last is being done. 

Nature stopped creative acts in the organic world long ago. 
All her efforts are now directed to modifying organs to meet new 
requirements. Nature never creates new organs, but modifies old 
ones. The process of change has been for forty years, slowly 
modifying a tubular calyx into a bell-shaped Q2\y^ in carnations, to 
meet requirements, without bursting, a plethoric corolla, which 
long antedated the requirement. This result is nearly accomplish- 
ed, half the introductions of 1900 and 1901 showing the bell-shaped 
type of calyxes already attained. A decade back, it could not be 
said that a single variety of carnations was exempt from ruinous 
ruptures. Now it can be said many kinds are not troubled with 
objectionable lesions, and a few are absolutely free from the fault. 



Prof. Authur called the rust disease, "Bacterium Dianthi," 
or Bacteriosis. Bacteriosis implies a disease of carnations caused 
by bacteria. Prof. Woods insists that the "Rust disease" is not 
caused by bacteria, but by the punctures of aphides and other sap 
sucking insects. Therefore, the term "Bacteriosis" is not expres- 
sive of facts and should be substituted by the term "Stigmo- 
nose," meaning a disease caused by punctures or piercings. 

From my point of view the argument is with Woods, rather 
than Authur, neither of whom fully embraces the whole bound- 
aries of the rust trouble. Be the germ of Uromyces caryophillus 
a bacterium or a fungus, whether it enters the structure of the car- 



BREVITIES. 163 

nation plant through its stomas, or through insect piercings, it 
quickly ceases to be a local and becomes a constitutional disease. 
If mosquitoes distribute the germs of yellow fever, aphides can 
carry and inoculate plants with the germs of rust. Whether they 
do or do not, it is patent to observing carnation growers that their 
vaccinating punctures are followed with the pathology of "Rust." 
Rust is no more a local disease than is scrofula. The animal 
may have a scrofulous diathesis, the plant a rust diathesis. A 
scrofulous gland may be cut out or a joint amputated, and it in 
nowise disturbs the constitutional disease. Diseased leaves on 
a rust plant may be picked off as fast as they appear, and it in 
nowise affects the fatal progress of the disease after it becomes 
constitutional. 

The rapidity with which this micro-organism multiplies itself 
is shown by the following extract from bulletin 59 of the A. K. 
Station, Purdue University. 

"We may conclude from these observations that under good 
conditions for growth an individual of Baderiiim Dianthi may be- 
come two within a half hour, and these two increase to four in 
the second half hour, and so on. At this rate there would be 
sixteen at the end of two hours, sixty- four at the end of three 
hours, 256 at the end of four hours, over sixteen million at the 
end of twelve hours and over 280 billions at the end of one day. 
Is it any wonder that a few germs placed in a test tube culture 
will make it turbid within twenty-four hours? Although the 
individual bacteria are very minute, requiring 1500 of them 
placed side by side to extend the sixteenth of an inch, yet the 280 
billions that may be formed from one germ within a day represent 
no insignificant bulk. They would in fact occupy fully a cubic 
inch of space. As it takes the material of three or four fluid cul- 
tures to fill a cubic inch, it is evident that even under the favor- 
able condition of artificial cultivation the food supply soon be- 
comes inadequate to keep up a maximum rate of growth." 



164 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 



THE PRINCIPLE BOTANICAL PARTS OF A CARNA- 
TION FLOWER CONSIST OF A 

Peduncle. — Stem that supports the flower. 
Receptacle. — Upper end of the peduncle. 
Calyx. — The outer covering of the flower. 
Bract. — Support around the base of the calyx. 
Corolla, — The inner part of a flower, composed of petals. 
Petal. — Leaf of the blossom. 
Stamen. — Male organ in center of the blossom. 
Anther — The enlarged end of the stamen, containing the 
pollen. 

Pollen. — The fertilizing dust on the anther. 

Filament. — The stem of the stamen. 

Pistil. — Female organ in the center of the blossom. 

Stigma. — Enlarged end of the pistil which receives the 
pollen. 

Style. — The cylindrical portion of the pistil of a plant. 

Ovary. — The vessel that contains the unripe seed. 

Pericarp. — The ripened ovary of a plant. 

Valves. — Parts or sections of the pericarp. 

Seed. — Rudiments of a new plant. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

POPULAR CULTIVATION OF CARNATION— CARNATIONS GROWN 
AT HOME FOR BOUTONNIERES, LAWN ADORN- 
MENTS AND TABLE DECORATIONS. 

THERE are many who find recreation and delight in grow- 
ing their own flowers, who possess ample means to pur- 
chase them . There is something strangely fascinating in 
a dormant seed bursting into green life under the skill of our own 
fingers and in continuing that life through the marvelous media 
of cuttings manipulated by our own judgment. It is a seance 
with the occult in nature and a manifestations of her mysterious 
laws governing life. 

It is for those who love and practice floriculture for its in- 
herent witchery and their own amusement that I write this chap- 
ter. 

The carnation pink is the most popular flower now grown, 
not excepting the rose. 

It is quite a mistake to think that carnations can only be 
successfully grown in greenhouses. In fact, they are not, strict- 
ly a greenhouse plant. The species is a native of cold climates, 
and its best health is maintained in a low temperature. It is a 
biennial and when lifted on greenhouse benches responds readily 
to heat and serves out its second year's existence in winter 
blooming. 

This is the reason it is so popular with florists. Hundreds of 
acres of glass are now devoted to its cultivation in America. 

The carnation is hardy at any temperature above zero. It 
flourishes in a wide range of temperature, but draws the line of 
growth at eighty degrees as quickly as it does at forty degrees of 
heat. The carnation plant is far healthier than the rose and is 
not nearly a$ capricious in its li^bits, 



166 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

The rose is a perennial plant, a carnation is a biennial; and 
the greatest cause of failure in growing the latter is in not recog- 
nizing this fact. After a carnation has served its two seasons of 
life it is absolutely useless and should be at once discarded. 

People who will not regard this point in the nature of the 
carnation carry along a half alive plant only for it to end in the 
absolute death of the plant. Then they will decry their ill-luck. 

There is no dispute as to the desire of the people for this ar- 
tistic flower. It embraces all colors— crimson, scarlet, pink, 
white and yellow and their various shades. It has an exhilara- 
ting clove fragrance, unequaled by any other flower. It has un- 
rivalled symmetry, beauty, and is one of the most lasting flowers 
that is grown. 

For winter bloom if plants must be kept in residences, you 
can not expect to be as successful as if they were kept in a green- 
house. 

The unfavorable conditions of the sitting room for carnation 
plants are the dry atmosphere and deficient light. Persons who 
have bay- widows may, to some extent, modify these conditions 
and those who possess the luxury of an adjoining conservatory 
can do so still more fully. 

Independent of house culture there are thousands of people 
who would be satisfied with carnation growing, if they could 
raise these "smiles of nature" from the middle of June until long 
after the first moderate frosts. This is as easily done as it is to 
raise any other flower of merit. 

There are no plants of as easy culture or that yield as much 
pleasure for the labor bestowed on them. 

There are but few persons who do not love flowers, and who 
do not love to decorate their homes by growing them and would 
like to grow carnations instinct with life and fragrant with the 
spices of the south-land among them if it were possible. 

It is not only possible, but easily attainable, if a few simple 
rules are observed. Every one attempting to grow carnations 
must remember they are biennials, that it is their nature to live 



CARNATIONS GROWN AT HOME. 167 

but two seasons, interrupted by a winter season of rest, after 
which their usefulness is gone. 

I now suppose we are going to grow a few carnations for 
seif-gratifi cation and home adornment. A supply must be obtain- 
ed, and there are only two ways to do so; one to buy a package of 
carnation seeds and germinate them. This is not practical. The 
seed is expensive whether home-grown or imported. A good va- 
riety will cost fifty cents a package, or about a penny a seed. The 
germination of these seeds is difficult under such conditions as 
exist about a cottage home. The plants at first are delicate and 
easily destroyed, and it takes all of the first season, if you are suc- 
cessful with your seed, to grow the plants to the blooming stage; 
then they have to be carried through the winter in the bay win- 
dow or a Hght cellar, for planting out in the spring. 

But after all this trouble, there is still a more serious trouble. 
Carnations do not come true from seed. You have no possible 
means of knowing what color you are going to get, or whether 
your crop of flowers will possess any merit at all, as compared 
with the fine varieties now in cultivation. Many of your seed- 
lings will have single flowers, no matter how much they cost, or 
how fine a strain they are claimed to be. 

It is estimated that florists grow 10,000 seedlings annually, 
and. out of this vast number there are not, on an average, over ten 
new carnations a year put upon the market as bein^ better than, 
or as good as existing kinds. If you purpose to grow a few car- 
nations, you want good ones. You must now see there is no hope 
of obtaining them from seed. 

Your next and only source of first supply is from some pro- 
fessional carnation grower. When a fine carnation is obtained 
from seed, the variety is perpetuated by cuttings. Large carna- 
tion growers thus continue the kinds by the tens of thousands. 
They then know in advance the color and character of the flower 
they desire to have, and are familiar with the habits and peculi- 
arities of the plants they obtain. 

There are seven primary divisions of colors in carnations, 
suggested by the writer, twenty years ago, and now generally ac- 



168 AMERICAN CABNATION CULTURE. 

cepted, viz: Crimson, scarlet, pink, white, yellow, white-varie- 
gated and yellow-variegated. 

Out of this list of colors select those you prefer and send your 
order for the same to a reliable carnation-growing florist. 

I will give you later on the name of the varieties of each 
of the foregoing classes, which I deem best adapted for growing 
at home by amateurs. 

After you receive your plants, say about the first of May, 
plant them out in any ordinary garden soil, from twelve to fifteen 
inches apart, each way. They will be rooted cuttings from four 
to six inches long and will be comparatively hardy. Keep them 
well cultivated through the entire season and neatly staked. 

These rooted plants to bloom early, say by the ist or 15th 
of June; the cuttings must have been taken from the parent 
plants early* say October or November of the previous fall. 

Carnation growers always have such on hand for growing 
flowers for their own wants early, out of doors. 

Now, after you have invested in the first purchase of plants, 
you doubtless would like to know how to continue your stock 
without the expense of repeating your purchase and ivith the inter- 
est of being your own propagator. 

In October take cuttings off your growing plants. Side 
shoots are better than the main stem — slips from three to four 
inches long. Use a sharp knife, then stick them in clean sand, 
filled in a box three or four inches deep, set the box under the 
shade of a tree or on the north side of the house, water them well 
and frequently, and from fifty to seventy-five per cent of your 
cuttings will root. Florists, with more favorable conditions, ex- 
pect to strike from ninety to one hundred per cent of their cut- 
tings. 

Another mode of continuing your stock is by layering. Take 
a stem of the number that will stool up from the crown of your 
plant, slit it about half off, bend it to the earth, peg it down with a 
twig or stick, and cover over the incised part with moist earth, 
and it will take root. This plan was at first pursued in this 
Q0uutr;>^, and is largely continued iu EJurope, It is called layer- 



CARNATIONS GROWN AT HOME. 169 

ing. The rooted layers will bloom very early the following sea- 
son. When well rooted, they, as well as the rooted cuttings, 
should be 'potted in three or four inch pots, and carried through 
the winter in a semi-dormant state, in the cellar near a window, 
comparatively dry, but not killing dry. There is a vast differ- 
ence between those two conditions of the soil, which degree can- 
not be described, but common sense must determine. 

In the spring, from the 15 of April to the first of May, they 
should be transplanted in the border for blooming. This is the 
routine of cultivation that must be pursued. After a carnation 
plant has bloomed out doors, or in the house one season it is 
worthless; it has lived its life and by nature served its purpose 
and no attempt should be made to continue its useless existence. 

I endeavor to give the plainest and most practical directions 
for the culture of carnations — my purpose being to show how they 
may be grown by anyone who is willing to devote a little time 
and trouble to their care. 

Some kinds of carnations are hardier than others, some bloom 
earlier in the season than others, some develop their flowers best 
under glass, or in a greenhouse, others bloom grandly in their 
open borders. I will give a list of colors and kinds which are 
best suited for open cultivation, at the homes of those who choose 
to try them. 

Out of the entire list of white carnations there is not one 
whose reputation for out-door growth is so well established as is 
that of Mrs. Fisher. This white variety is grown almost exclu- 
sively by florists for their open air carnation bloom. Its flowers 
are a pure white, large and deliciously fragrant. One can not do 
better than to grow it. 

For pinks procure Diaz Albertina, Daybreak, Wm. Scott and 
Rose Queen. In carmine, select Tidal Wave; scarlet, Portia; 
white-variegated, Helen Keller and Goldfinch. In the pure yel- 
lows there is but little choice — Gold Nugget and Golden Triumph, 
and these are not very meritorious. 

The two or three kinds of carnations which experience has 
proven to do the best in pots in the window of the sitting room 



170 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

during winter months are Alaska, white; and Winter Cheer, rich 
Vermillion. 

I have not given a large list to select from — to do so would 
only tend to confuse. Neither have I mentioned the names of any 
of recent introductions because their reputation for out-door 
blooming is not yet well established. If an amateur desires a 
brief list on which rests the greatest expectation of carnation ex- 
perts, let him order Cressbrook, Egypt, Norway, Mrs. Nelson, 
Estelle, Genevieve lyord, Queen Louise, Prosperity, Alba Superba, 
Mrs. Lawson, Mrs. Dean, and Marquis. The color, records, de- 
scriptions and half-tones of these and other choice varieties may be 
found on the pages of American Carnation Culture. 

Carnation plants when received from the florist should be 
neatly and firmly planted in the border, and snugly staked as 
they develop in their growth. 

Plants of the kinds which do not bloom profusely during the 
summer and fall months are the best to lift and pot for winter 
bloom. Five or six inch pots are necessary, and the soil in the 
pot should not be kept too wet at any time. The foliage should 
be frequently sprinkled with cold water and not kept in too warm 
a place. 

Rooted carnation plants are cheap and bear transportation 
well. You can send for the young plants to a florist a thousand 
miles away. They can be received by mail, and if well rooted and 
cared for, every one of them will grow. 

The range of colors attained in carnations is so great, the 
flower is so artistic, its grace so perfect, its duration so lasting, its 
fragrance so delicious, that it stands in the esteem of the lovers of 
flowers as "the sweetest smile of nature." 



CHAPTER XXX. 
EPIIvOGUE^EVOLUTION OF THE FIVE-PETAIvED PINK. 

EVOIvUTlON is the grandest theme that ever engaged the 
mind of man. It is the history of creation, stepping by- 
resistless law from a green Eden to a cindered world. It 
does not derogate from Deity, but magnifies omnipotence. Every 
man must have a loftier conception of the creative cause, who 
sees life as an act of God, and evolution as its law. One theory 
views God as an adventurer, without prevision, or prophecy, gov- 
erning the world from contingencies as they arise. The other sees 
him as an omnicient ruler, trailing through duration a wise and 
inexorable law, that moulds worlds out of nebulae, cosmos out of 
chaos, and life out of latency. Darwin climbed this idea and built 
his throne on its simple truth. Under the law of evolution, orders, 
classes, genera and species of the vegetable kingdom, deploy 
themselves into serried ranks, by the imperious mandate of the 
best to persist, the fittest to survive, the strongest to endure, and 
no flower blooms without an object, no insect crawls on aim- 
less feet, no man aspires without a purpose. 

It was an act of amazing power to create a plant instinct with 
life, and one of measureless wisdom, to project a law by the thau- 
maturgy of which a noxious Blind Starwort should change into 
the humble five-petaled pink, seen by Theophrastus, that into the 
carnation of Alegatiere, and that into Dianthus Superba of the 
Twentieth Century. Man is a civihzed savage, a carnation is 
an evolved weed. Heredity and progress are fighting forces, one 
advances, the other retreats. One cries "go!" the other "whoa!" 
One is history, the other prophecy; one lifts men to monarchs, 
the other lapses them to lazzaroni; one lifts a catchfly to a I^aw- 
son, the other would degrade it to a weed. 

Carnations have kept abreast with the progress of the ages, 
in their marvelous march, and have ever advanced the standards 



172 



AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 





Courtesy of F. R, Pierson Co. 

THE MARQUIS, 



EPILOGUE. 173 

of excellence up toward the mountain's crest, where beauty 
dwells and toys with grace. Evolution sits sceptered in the 
throne room of a carnation's life, it is ambushed with its embryo 
in its seedbed of mealy albumen. Evolution hears the chimes of 
loftier life, counts the units of heat, and lig-ht that fate affords, 
then mounts to the summit of their annual average. A law of 
the universe is epitomized in this plant. The carnation is embodied 
evolution. It enacts the law in pantomime and sing its song 
without an accent. 

A grain of corn hides in its germ food for millions. There 
are unborn forests in an acorn's cup, and a world of wonders cor- 
ralled in a carnation's carpel. 

There is not an instance in the world's botany in which a 
single variety of a genus of plants so completely absorbs the mer- 
its of an Order, and all its cognate species, as does the carnation. 
There are but three species of the Diantbus genus of plants, be- 
sides Caryo})hyllus, that bear a flower worthy of a glance. D. 
Ba7'batus, D. Plumaris, D. Chinesiis, and their countless sports. 
The cognate relations of carnation are known as ragweed, star- 
wort, catchfly lychnis, ragged robin, stickey weed, sandwort, 
mouse- eared pink, and scores of others too insignificant to sport 
even a vulgar name, which the grace and beauty of Dianthus 
Superba would entrance a seraph, if it was not gazing on a God. 

There never was a Satrap with as many poor relations, or a 
Midas with such a multitude of impoverished peons. It is 
sovereign over the realm of flowers and rules a world of weeds. 

There is a dynamic energy that centralizes sentiment and 
polarizes power. Every thing on earth tends to Alpine heights, or 
to tartarean depths, to mirific] force, or ravishing beauty. The 
most chaotic contentions of life at last focalize themselves in a 
single brain, condense their issues into edicts and leap in epi- 
grams from fire-touched tongues. 

"lyiberty or Death" is all there was between Lexington and 
Yorktown. "Union and Liberty," between Sumpter and Appo- 
mattox, 



174 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 

A sunburst of evolving floral beauty is all there is of 
carnations between Theophrastus and Charles Starr, the isle of 
Greece and Avondale. 

There is a mysterious bond of union between painting and 
poetry, music and flowers. They are but different manifestations 
of the same master passion in the human mind. They sanctify 
the spot wherever they touch the dirt of earth. 

A poet boy plowed the rugged hills beside the river Ayr, 
and they intone the songs of Robert Burns. Angelo frescoed 
the "lyast Judgment" on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in 
Rome, with such thrilling realism, that the beholder stands palsied 
in the presence of the most mirific tragedy God can ever enact. 

Melody caressed a poor man's child at Augsburg and 
Mozart, at the age of six, began to time the keyboard of the 
world's sweet sounds. Tactful fingers in cross-fertilization 
mixed life and oriency with mystic mordants in a crypt of con- 
ception, and Buttercup rainbows Avondale with the color wealth 
of all the zones. 

Flowers are embodied sentiment, bits of sunshine tangled with 
life's shades, and heralds of a higher range of virtues. While 
science, that never throbed a pulse of poetry with its Theodolite, is 
measuring the curves and angles of these mental marvels, religion 
with faultless prescience sees God behind them all. 

Clothed in crimson and white, red and maroon, carmine and 
pink, purple and gold, Dianthus Superba, with flashing beauty, 
flings the perfumed smoke of spices from censers not lit with 
fire, and steps with matchless grace across the threshold of the 
Twentieth century, the unchallenged color, Oueen of Flora. 




Courtesy of F. R. PiersoQ Co. 

MRS. JAMES DEAN^ 




PARTIAL VIEW OF THE LAMBORN GREENHOUSES. 



PETER HENDERSON & CO., 



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fear and loohs on either wood or iron Greenhouses. It stays 
ivhere yont pat it. In 5, 10, 15, 20, 27 or 50 gals. 

HAMMOND'S PAINT & SLUG SHOT WORKS, 

FISHKILL-ON-HUDSON; N. Y. 



1880. 1901. 

HAMMOND'S SLUG SHOT. 

Destroys pests which prey upon Vegetation in Greenhouse. Conservatory or Garden. 



SLUG SHOT is a composite powder not dependent 
solely upon any one of its parts for effectiveness. For 
21 years SLUG SHOT has been used, doing effective 
work against Leaf Eaters, Juice Suckers, Sow Bugs, 
Snails or Grubs iu the soil. SLUG SHOT is spread by 
duster or blower. Water will carry it through a sprayer 
or pump. It destroys in this way elm tree beetles, cat- 
erpillars on trees. Where Snails or Sow Bugs are 
troublesome, dust SLUG SHOT on the soil with a dus- 
ter. SLUG SHOT rids fowls, calves and dogs of lice 
and fleas. SLUG SHOT is put in tin perforated screw- 
top canisters and cartons holding one lb. The 5 lb. pack- 
age (see cut) retails at 25 or 30c each, larger packages 
at less rate. SLUG SHOT is 

SOLD BY THE SEEDSMEN IN ALL PARTS OF THE 

UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 




GRAPE DUST 



for mildews 
and blights. 



For pamphlet 
address 



SOLUTION OF COPPER SfT,rio«r^"' 

B. HAMMOND, rishklll-on Hudson, N. Y. 



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3 CO 



^he "CLIPPE-R" Lawn Mower. 



This machine is a great improvement and has 
many advantages over the old style revolving knife. 
It is lighter, more durable, cuts any length of grass, 
and enables you to mow up to flower beds, trees and 
buildings. No sickle or shears needed to finish up. 

It will cut your grass without crush- 
ing it or breaking the small feeder of the 
roots. It will cut grass two feet high as 
easily as that of two inches. 

Made in six sizes. Write for cata. 
logue and prices. 




CLIPPER LflWKlWER CO., 

Nofristown, Pa. 



Every Florist Needs One I 

UNION KNIFE AND 

TOOL GRINDER 

No. \. 




The Best Light 

Grinding 

Machine 
on the Market 

PiKe's SicKle and Tool Grinders 

Excels all others in Efficiency, Strength, Simplicity and Durability. 





•Send for illustrated Catalogue of our complete 
line of Tool Grinders— hand and foot p2wer, Scythe 
Stones, Oil Stones. Razor Hones, Knife Sharp- 
eners, etc. 

THE PIKE MANUFAOTURING CO.. 

PIKE STATION, N. H. 



*'THE CHICAGO" 



TYPEWRITER 
ONLY 



$ 



35 

ISIOT 
$100.00 



g^^" Guaranteed Equal 

to any $ioo Machine on ::p- I^JPi^M 

the market. Catalogue 

Free. 




Stenography 



We also furnish if desired with "THE 
CHICAGO" a complete course of the 
popular Gregg system of SHORTHAND taught by mail for $5.00 Easiest 
to learn, easiest to write, and the same as taught by leading Colleges for 
I50.00 and up. Send for our letters of recommendation showing what 
others are doing. For Full Information, Address, 



CHICAGO WRITING MACHINE CO., 



Dept. X. 94-96 Wendell St. 



CHICAGO, ILL., U.S.A. 



THE FLORISTS' MANUAL, 

by rVm. SCOTT, 

Is a book of 224 large pages (8x11 inches), and contains about 200 article.s on commercial 
plants and cultural operations. Kach giving the "meat" only, from the personal experience 
of a thoroughly practical man who is in daily touch with each department of the busi 
ness, and who has that rare quality of being able to tell others what they want to know. 
The articles are arranged alphabetically, like those in an encyclopoedia, and in an in- 
stant one can turn to the subject upon which light is desired at the moment. The book 
is illustrated by over 200 fine half-tone engravings. It is 

A Complete Reference Book for Commercial Florists 

and is a whole library on practical commercial floriculture in one volume. It is hand- 
somely and substantially bound in half leather, with specially designed title in gold. 



c 



Price, $5.00. 
Carriage Prepaid. 



) Florists' Pub. Co., 



CAXTON 
BUILDING, 



Chicago. 



nth & Jefferson Sts., PHILADELPHIA, PA, 

Specialties in Carnations, Geranitims, 
CKrysantHemnins, and Pansies. 



Mrs. Jt. S. Nelson." 



The merits of this great acquisition to floral wealth resides 
in the profusion and continuity of three and a half and four- 
inch bloom; of a glistening pink color; borne on stems two 
to two and a half, feet long, with a non-bursting caylx and 
possessing extraordinary keeping qualities. The flower 
scored 94 points at Boston and (^lyi at Cincinnati. 
The Florists' Revieiu. — ''M.r. Nelson surely has a treasure." 
The American F/orisl. —''The best ever put on the market." 
The Florists' Exchange. — "Mrs. Nelson will pass for a fancy and 
a fine commercial sort. 

This marked advance in the march of carnations will be disseminated 
after February i, 1902. Orders filled in rotation. Prices: i doz., 12.50; 25, 
$350; 50, $6.00; 100, |ro.oo; looo, $80.00. 250 go at 1000 rates. 

E, A. /SELSO/\, Indianapolis, Ind. 

(See life size half-toue of "MRS. E. A. NELSON," on page 79.) 

5. 5. SKIDELSKY, Philadelphia, Pa„ Agt. 




"J4ome and J^loifers" 

A Mag'azine Devoted to 
tl\e 'World Beatitifxil. j^ 



HOME AND FLOWERS is devoted to the world beautiful. Its col- 
umns tell you how to grow flowers, nature's sweetest gift to man. 
This splendid magazine is the only publication of the kind. It gives 
the fullest information in regard to home floriculture in all its phases 
— tells you exactly what to do, when to do it and how to do it in order to 
make flowers grow and bloom. Every article published is the record of the 
actual experience of someone who grows flowers successfully. By reading 
it you learn that which it would take y^u years to acquire through your 
own experience. The best varieties, the time to plant, how to plant, the 
best fertilizers, the amount of water and heat needed, how and when to 
prune, and similar topics are fully treated. Especial attention is paid to the 
proper planting of lawns and home grounds, and to the arrangement of 
flowers. HOME AND FLOWERS is the recognized organ and exponent of 
the movement for town, village and neighborhood improvement, and its 
pages contain much valuable information about the widespread development 
of civic beauty. 

A Publication Full of Practical, Helpful Hints. 

In its issue for a year, HOME AND FLOWERS, which was formerly 
How to Grow Flowers, presents its wide circle of readers a most inter- 
esting: assortment of articles on floriculture. Allied topics are likewise 
treated in a practical and readable manner. The only floral journal in 
America of general circulation which is not issued as a "house organ" of 
some firm of florists, HOME AND FLOWERS occupies exclusively a field 
which offers opportunities for the publication of a vast amount of matter 
which is alike interesting and instructive. Each number contains from 
twenty-eight to forty-four large pages, printed on fine book paper, and 
handsomely illustrated with half-tone engravings, the reproductions of 
photographs which show flowers as they actually appear. The mission of 
flowers is to make the world brighter and better. The mission of this 
magazine is to interest the people of America in flowers. It is edited in 
the belief that the best that is in mankind may be brought out through the 
fragrant presence of flowers in the daily environment of life — that flowers 
in the home will create the love of beauty in which lies the hope of the race. 
It seeks first to bring about the culture of flowers in every home, and then 
to develop the spirit of public beauty and love of outdoor art. 

SUBSCRIPTION TERMS: 
The subscription price for HOME AND FLOWERS is only $1.00 a year. 

U/>e FI^ORAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

SPRINGFIELD, OHIO, 




TYPE OF A FINELY FRINGED CARNATION. 



sT)0 ,, 








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